NIGHT OF MUSIC TURNS TO HORROR
At least 59 dead, 527 injured after sniper opens fire from 32nd-floor hotel window
The rapid-fire popping sounded like firecrackers at first, and many in the crowd of 22,000 country music fans didn’t understand what was happening when the band stopped playing and singer Jason Aldean bolted off the stage.
“That’s gunshots,” a man could be heard saying emphatically on a cellphone video in the nearly half-minute of silence and confusion that followed. A woman pleaded with others: “Get down! Get down! Stay down!”
Then the bam-bam-bam sounds resumed. And pure terror set in.
“People start screaming and yelling and we start running,” said Andrew Akiyoshi, who provided the cellphone video to The Associated Press. “You could feel the panic. You could feel like the bullets were flying above us. Everybody’s ducking
down, running low to the ground.”
While some concertgoers hit the ground, others pushed for the crowded exits, shoving through narrow gates and climbing over fences as 40- to 50-round bursts of what was believed to be automatic weapons fire rained down on them from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay casino hotel.
By Monday evening, 59 people were dead and 527 injured in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
“You just didn’t know what to do,” Akiyoshi said. “Your heart is racing and you’re thinking, ‘I’m going to die.’”
The gunman, identified as Stephen Craig Paddock,
a 64-year-old retired accountant from Mesquite, Nevada, killed himself before officers stormed Room 135 in the gold-colored glass skyscraper. He had been staying there since Thursday and had busted out windows to create his sniper’s perch, roughly 500 yards from the concert grounds.
The motive for the attack remained a mystery, with Sheriff Joseph Lombardo saying: “I can’t get into the mind of a psychopath at this point.”
Paddock — who owned rental properties, held a private pilot’s license and liked to play high-stakes video poker — had 16 guns in his hotel room, including rifles with scopes, Lombardo said. Two were modified to make them fully automatic, according to two U.S. officials briefed by law enforcement who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still unfolding.
At Paddock’s home, authorities found 18 more guns, explosives and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Also, several pounds of ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer that has been used to make explosives, were in his car, the sheriff said.
The FBI said it had found nothing to suggest the attack was connected to international terrorism, despite a claim of responsibility
from the Islamic State group, which said Paddock was a “soldier” who recently converted to Islam. ISIS had made bogus similar claims in previous attacks.
In an address to the nation, President Donald Trump called the bloodbath “an act of pure evil” and added: “In moments of tragedy and horror, America comes together as one. And it always has.” He ordered flags flown at halfstaff.
With hospitals jammed with victims, authorities put out a call for blood donations and set up a hotline to report missing people and speed the identification of the dead and wounded. They also opened a “family reunification center” for people to find loved ones.
The shooting began at 10:08 p.m. local time, and the gunman appeared to fire unhindered for more
than 10 minutes, according to radio traffic. Police frantically tried to locate him and determine whether the gunfire was coming from Mandalay Bay or the neighboring Luxor hotel.
At 10:14 p.m., an officer said on his radio that he was pinned down against a wall on Las Vegas Boulevard with 40 to 50 people.
“We can’t worry about the victims,” an officer said at 10:15 p.m. “We need to stop the shooter before we have more victims. Anybody have eyes on him? ... Stop the shooter.”
The shooting had begun as Aldean closed out the three-day Route 91 Harvest Festival. Muzzle flashes could be seen in the dark as the gunman fired away. The crowd, funneled tightly into a wide-open space, had little cover and no easy way to escape. Victims fell to the ground, while others
fled in panic. Some hid behind concession stands or crawled under parked cars.
Faces were etched with shock and confusion, and people wept and screamed.
Tales of heroism and compassion emerged quickly: Couples held hands as they ran through the dirt lot. Some of the bleeding were carried out by fellow concertgoers. While dozens of ambulances took away the wounded, while some people loaded victims into their cars and drove them to the hospital. People fleeing the concert grounds hitched rides with strangers, piling into cars and trucks.
Some of the injured were hit by shrapnel. Others were trampled or were injured jumping fences.
Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said the attack was the work of a “crazed lunatic full of hate.”