FBI to question gunman’s partner
UNITED STATES: The Las Vegas gunman transferred US$100,000 overseas in the days before the attack, and planned the massacre so meticulously that he even set up cameras inside his high-rise hotel room and on a service cart outside the door, apparently to spot anyone coming for him, authorities say.
Meanwhile, investigators are taking a harder look at the shooter’s girlfriend and what she might have known about the attack, with the Las Vegas sheriff naming her a ‘‘person of interest’'.
Authorities are trying to determine why Stephen Paddock killed 59 people at a country music festival in the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history. They have been speaking with his Philippineborn girlfriend, Marilou Danley, 62, who was in the Philippines.
Danley left Manila yesterday, police and immigration sources said, and would be met by FBI agents on her arrival in the US. An official said she was returning to clear her name.
Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said he was ‘‘absolutely’’ confident that authorities would find out what set off Paddock, a 64-year-old high-stakes gambler and retired accountant who killed himself before police stormed his 32nd-floor room.
Paddock transferred US$100,000 to the Philippines in the days before the shooting, a US official briefed by law enforcement but not authorised to speak publicly said on condition of anonymity.
Investigators were still trying to trace that money, and were also looking into a least a dozen reports over the past several weeks that said Paddock gambled more than US$10,000 per day, the official said.
A Philippine police official said authorities in Manila had been told that Paddock used identification belonging to Danley, who has an Australian passport, when checking in to the Mandalay Bay hotel.
The cameras Paddock set up at the hotel were part of his extensive preparations.
‘‘I anticipate he was looking for anybody coming to take him into custody,’' Lombardo said. A hotel security guard who approached the room was shot through the door and wounded in the leg.
In addition to the cameras, investigators found a computer and 23 guns in the hotel room, along with ‘‘bump stock’' devices that can enable a rifle to fire continuously, like an automatic weapon.
More than 500 people were injured in the rampage, some by gunfire, some during the chaotic escape from the festival site. At least 45 patients at two hospitals remained in a critical condition yesterday. All but three of the dead had been identified, Lombardo said.
As for what may have set Paddock off, retired FBI profiler Jim Clemente speculated that there was ‘‘some sort of major trigger in his life - a great loss, a breakup, or maybe he just found out he has a terminal disease’’.
US President Donald Trump said yesterday that now was not the time for a political debate on gun control in the wake of the mass shooting in Las Vegas.
Asked during his return from touring hurricane damage in Puerto Rico whether such a debate would come at some point in time, Trump responded, ‘‘Perhaps that will come,’’ but added that it was ‘‘not for now’’.
In the meantime, Republican leaders said they were shelving a bill that would have loosened restrictions on the purchase of silencers.
Las Vegas hotels have stepped up security in the wake of the attack. Armed guards were dotted around the Mandalay Bay hotel, and police were stationed beside lifts. Signs advised visitors that shows were cancelled, and many restaurants and shops were closed.
-