Weapons of war in Vegas gun maniac’s hotel room
THE retired accountant who massacred 59 concert-goers in Las Vegas owned enough weapons to arm a platoon of soldiers.
Stephen Paddock took advantage of Nevada’s lax gun laws to buy 42 firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition at different gun shops and arms fairs.
The 64-year-old millionaire amassed a selection of high-powered assault rifles similar to those used by soldiers on the battlefield. Crime scene photos which emerged yesterday show an assault rifle resting on a tripod on the floor just yards from where police officers burst into his 32nd-floor room at the Mandalay Bay hotel.
Other pictures show two Colt AR-15 assault rifles lying on the floor. One had been modified to make it capable of firing at a rate of up to 800 rounds a minute. In other developments yesterday: Investigators remained baffled as to the shooter’s motive and did not rule out mental illness;
Donald Trump described Paddock as ‘a sick man’ and ‘a demented man’ but kicked the issue of gun control into the long grass;
Paddock was seen gambling heavily in his hotel casino 48 hours before the shooting;
Concert-goers who tried to save others by acting as ‘human shields’ are among the dead.
Paddock took at least ten suitcases into his hotel room over a period of time, after checking in on Thursday. Hotel staff say they did not notice anything amiss.
Pictures yesterday showed the entrance to Paddock’s suite covered with crime scene tape and with several bullet holes. They were likely caused by Paddock as he shot a security guard in the leg through the door after carrying out the massacre.
Armed officers went in after the guard was shot.
On the ground in the hallway outside the door, a do-not-disturb sign is seen knocked to the ground, as well as an exit sign. Debris litters the floor and a used roomservice trolley is parked outside another nearby door.
Paddock, who lived in a retirement community, also legally bought two devices called ‘bump stocks’ for £75 each which made his guns fully automatic. The devices, which replace the rifle’s stock, use the weapon’s recoil to ‘bump’ another shot, allowing the shooter to fire an entire magazine by pulling the trigger only once.
The maniac used much of his arsenal to mow down hundreds of victims in a hail of gunfire at the end of a Las Vegas country music festival from Suite 32135, one of the hotel’s Vista suites, which spreads out over 1,700 sq ft and offers floor-to-ceiling windows.
At least 527 were injured in the carnage on Sunday night in what was the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. The mayhem ended when police burst into Paddock’s £700-a-night suite to find him dead. He is believed to have shot himself with a pistol.
Officers found 23 guns – including 16 military-style assault rifles – and thousands of shell casings strewn across the floor.
There are about 8million AR-15 rifles in American homes and they have been used in previous mass shootings. The bullets from the weapon are capable of disintegrating bones.
Some of Paddock’s guns had telescope sights and were packed with military-grade ammunition. At least one was said to have been a fully automatic gun, which is illegal in Nevada. American gun dealer Harvey Morgan, who listened to an audio recording of the shooting, said: ‘It sounded like a machine gun.
‘You can’t manually fire a regular gun that fast.’
A hammer which Paddock used to smash two holes in the windows which he fired through was found among the shell casings.
Paddock’s car was found nearby with several pounds of fertilizer inside. It contained ammonium nitrate which can be used to make a bomb.
When police raided his home in the small city of Mesquite, about 90 miles from Las Vegas, they found 19 more guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition. They also found an explosive called Tannerite, which is used to make explosive targets for shooting practice. Electronic devices were also seized.
Many in the 22,000-strong audience on the final night of the threeday Route 21 Harvest festival thought the gunfire was fireworks until they saw bloodied victims dropping to the ground.
Survivors hid behind walls and under cars. Some took refuge in a walk-in freezer. Others dragged the injured to safety while Paddock stopped to reload.
Several of the injured were trampled during a stampede to escape the bloodshed and others got caught on barbed wire fences. As investigators continue to hunt for
‘There were bloodstains everywhere’
a motive behind the slaughter, some of the gun shops which sold Paddock weapons said he seemed normal to them.
Christopher Sullivan, general manager of Guns & Guitars in Mesquite, sold Paddock a handgun and two rifles. He said the
shooter had passed standard federal screening checks, and seemed like ‘a normal fellow, a normal guy – nothing out of the ordinary’.
Mr Sullivan added: ‘As for what goes on in a person’s mind, I couldn’t tell you. I know nothing about him personally.’ Chris Michel, the owner of Dixie GunWorx in St George, Utah, said Paddock came into his store three times, and bought one shotgun.
Mr Michel described Paddock as an ‘average, everyday Joe Blow’ and said he was ‘nobody that stood out’.
He said the killer seemed ‘mellow’ and ‘not uptight’. He added: ‘With him, we didn’t have that feeling. None of the staff had any red flags whatsoever.’
Several other weapons were bought at Discount Firearms and Ammo, a few blocks from the main strip in Las Vegas. The shop’s owners refused to comment. At least six of the guns were bought at Cabela’s in Verdi, Nevada.
A manager at the store also declined to comment.
Firearms expert Mike Yardley said the shooting once again highlighted the ease with which it was possible to buy high-powered assault rifles.
‘Buying an assault rifle in the US is not much harder than buying a vacuum cleaner or a television,’ he said. ‘It is very easy to walk into a gun shop and buy weapons and even easier to buy the ammunition.
‘There are lots of gun fairs in states such as Nevada and Arizona. Sellers often turn a blind eye to paperwork at these events. The availability of these type of military-grade weapons in the US is sheer lunacy.’
Yesterday more than a dozen investigators, most wearing jackets marked FBI and all in blue protective gear, arrived in unmarked sedans and entered the concert site to pick through the scene for clues.
Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt compared the scene with a war zone.
‘Shoes, baby strollers, chairs, sunglasses, purses. The whole field was just littered with things,’ he said. ‘There were bloodstains everywhere.’