Las Vegas billboards solicit for tips on gunman’s motive
Tourists coming to gamble and party on the Strip will soon find something other than bright lights welcoming them to "Fabulous Las Vegas."
Billboards will serve as a stark reminder that investigators remain stumped about what drove a gunman to mow down concertgoers from a perch in a high-rise casino hotel last Sunday.
"We still do not have a clear motive or reason why," a frustrated Clark County Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said Friday. "We have looked at literally everything."
Investigators have chased 1,000 leads and examined Stephen Paddock's politics, his finances, any possible radicalization and his social behavior-typical investigative avenues that have helped uncover the motive in past shootings. "We have been down each and every one of these paths," McMahill said. "We all want answers."
The FBI announced that billboards would go up around the city asking anyone with information to dial 800-CALL-FBI. "If you know something, say something," saidAaron Rouse, agent in charge of the Las Vegas FBI office. "We will not stop until we have the truth."
Paddock, a reclusive 64-year-old high-stakes gambler, rained bullets on the crowd at a country music festival from his 32nd-floor hotel suite, killing 58 and wounding hundreds before taking his own life.
McMahill said investigators had reviewed voluminous video from the casino and don't think Paddock had an accomplice in the shooting, but they want to know if anyone knew about his plot beforehand.
In their effort to find any hint of his motive, investigators were looking into whether he was with a prostitute days before the shooting, were scrutinizing cruises he took and were trying to make sense of a cryptic note with numbers jotted on it found in his hotel room, a federal official said.
It is unusual to have so few clues five days after a mass shooting. What officers have found is that Paddock planned his attack meticulously. He requested an upper-floor room overlooking the festival, stockpiled 23 guns, a dozen of them modified to fire continuously like an automatic weapon, and set up cameras inside and outside his room to watch for approaching officers.
His arsenal also included tracer rounds that can improve a shooter's firing accuracy in the dark, a law enforcement official told the AP. He bought 1,000 rounds of the .308-caliber and .223-caliber tracer ammunition from a private buyer he met at a Phoenix gun show, a law enforcement official said on condition of anonymity.