CARNAGE
Nation’s deadliest attack since 9/11
Bodies litter the ground Monday after massacre at country music festival in Las Vegas by 64-year-old retired accountant Stephen Paddock. Back page, terrified concertgoers flee the scene in all-too-familiar image of the latest American gun rampage.
STEPHEN PADDOCK sat alone in his 32nd-floor room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, the bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip at odds with the dark thoughts in his head.
The retired accountant was surrounded by a lethal arsenal assembled over four days since his Thursday check-in: 23 firearms, including 16 rifles, some automatic weapons, at least one handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Just after 10 p.m. on Sunday, Paddock used a hammerlike device to smash the tinted glass of two windows high above the city. He grabbed one of the rifles, and pointed his weapon at thousands of country music fans below.
On the third and final night of the Route 91 Harvest Festival, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history was about to begin.
By the time Paddock ended the terror attack by taking his own life, 59 people were dead and an additional 527 injured. In the midst of one 31-second span, he fired a staggering 280 rounds, roughly nine bullets every second — from about 1,200 feet away. Sin City had never seen hell like this. “It was like a war zone,” survivor Joseph Ortunio told CNN hours later in a phrase repeated often Monday. “People were just dropping to the ground (or) running.”
The first of the gunshots sounded like fireworks popping in the distance. Chart-topping country music singer Jason Aldean stepped back from the microphone after hearing the muffled noise on a clear, warm evening.
“It was like bottle rockets going off,” said Seth Bayles of West Hollywood, Calif., who was standing about 50 feet from the front of the stage.
And then came the unmistakable rata-tat-tat of bullets.
There was instant chaos. The shooting continued unabated for at least 10 minutes, maybe longer. Bullets found flesh, blood began to flow, screams tore through the night.
“We saw people dropping,” recounted Bayles. “We saw someone get hit and then we started running.”
The 64-year-old gunman kept firing in short, steady bursts, his seemingly endless barrage of bullets cutting a bloody swath of carnage through the fleeing crowd across Las Vegas Blvd.
Paddock, who had no military experience, set up two rifles with scopes on tripods to ensure a steadier stream of death on the crowd below, The New York Times reported. More than 22,000 people were at the soldout festival.
The shooter had methodically smuggled the weapons inside, apparently one at a time, inside the 10 pieces of luggage kept in his two-room suite.
Some of the assault rifles were apparently modified into automatic weapons to increase the volume of bullets.
Revelers, trapped like fish in a barrel as the shooter perched high above in the gold-colored skyscraper, ran for their lives as the fusillade of bullets slammed into people all around them.
“It was the craziest stuff I've ever seen in my entire life,” said survivor Kodiak Yazzie, 36. “You could hear the noise was coming from west of us, from Mandalay Bay. You could see a flash-flashflash (of muzzle fire).”
Gail Davis recalled hearing the first small pops of gunfire before the outdoor concert venue filled with howls of terror.
“I looked over to my right, where this girl had been standing right beside me,” Davis told CBS News. “She grabbed her stomach and looked at her hands, and her hands were all bloody.
“And she just kind of screamed and she just fell back.”
Music fan Monique Dumas, sitting in the sixth row of the
show, said the fear was instantaneous once people realized they were under attack by an unseen shooter with what seemed like unlimited firepower.
“Organized chaos,” the Canadian tourist said of the fleeing audience. “It took four to five minutes (to get outside), and all that time there was gunfire.”
Ortunio said he and a bleeding friend who was shot in the shoulder scaled a 10-foot fence — with the help of good Samaritans — to escape the gunfire. The wounded woman was expected to recover, he said.
Mike McGarry, a Philadelphia financial adviser at the show, threw himself on top of young concert attendees lying on the ground as hundreds of shots echoed around them.
“It was crazy,” he said. “They’re 20. I’m 53. I lived a good life.”
McGarry escaped, too — although the back of his shirt was covered with footprints after he was trampled by people bolting from the venue.
Backstage, country singer Taylor Reeve — along with fellow performers and crew members — found refuge on the floor of a tour trailer as bullets slammed into buses and equipment cases.
“It just went on and on,” Reeve said. “I can’t even describe the feeling. Just absolute terror.”
Cops and other first responders found themselves driving into the gunfire raining from the skyline. Initially, it was unclear if the shooter was inside the Mandalay or the nearby Luxor hotel.
“Be advised we are taking fire from a very high floor,” a Las Vegas police radio transmission warned cops rushing to the scene. “We believe it’s possibly the Mandalay Bay.
“Every officer that comes up is going to be a target if they’re going up Las Vegas Blvd.”
Armed with the warning, only two responding on-duty cops were wounded — one was in stable condition after surgery, the other only slightly injured.
a 10-year Among Beach, civilianthe dead Calif., employeewas police Rachaelof force.the Parker,ManhattanShe was attending the concert with friends, including a co-worker who suffered minor injuries.
Paddock, of Mesquite, Nev., emerged as an unlikely mass killer: A multimillionaire real estate investor, living in a retirement community in a town of just 18,000.
He liked to gamble, betting up to $1,000 a hand, and maintained a $50,000 line of credit at several major Vegas casinos, according to a source.
Paddock had no significant rap sheet, with cops in Mesquite noting he was never even pulled over for a traffic stop. He had a minor citation on his record, according to CBS News. His brother described Paddock as nonreligious, apolitical and hardly a gun aficionado.
During the days before the shooting, hotel housekeepers in his room saw no indication of his arsenal or the coming rage, authorities said.
As the clocked ticked toward 10:20 p.m. on Sunday, Paddock kept pulling the triggers of his multiple weapons, kept raining death from above on the innocents below.
Terrified targets crouched behind the concession stands, or crawled beneath parked cars in hopes of survival. The injured included gunshot victims, those struck by shrapnel, and others trampled in the mad rush for safety.
Paddock also fired through the door of his hotel room at a security guard, putting a bullet through the man’s leg. The Mandalay Bay employee survived.
Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said police and firefighters responded quickly, but were unsure of the floor where the gunman was holed up.
Calls from hotel guests and consultation with hotel security led law enforcement to the 32nd floor.
“Once they made it to the hallway, they immediately knew which was the room in question,” said Lombardo.
SWAT teams using explosives stormed the room, only to find Paddock had ended the carnage himself, taking his own life.
Reports indicated that smoke from Paddock’s furious firing set off alarms that were still ringing inside the room when law enforcement burst inside.
Investigators found proof of Paddock’s intention to increase the death toll: unused ammo in his room and bombmaking materials in his parked car.
Although cops initially believed Paddock was with his girlfriend, they soon announced that he acted alone.
“A lone wolf,” declared Lombardo.
Authorities also dismissed a claim from ISIS that AARP candidate Paddock was actually one of the terror group’s soldiers. “We have determined to this point no connection to an international terrorist group,” said FBI Special Agent Aaron Rouse of the Las Vegas office. ISIS responded with a second communique that identified the politically inactive Paddock as “Abu Abdul Barr alAmriki,” describing him as a martyr for the Islamic cause. Girlfriend Marilou Danley, 62, was vacationing in Tokyo and will meet with law enforcement upon her return.
SWAT teams descending on one of Paddock’s homes, about 80 miles north of Las Vegas in Mesquite, recovered 19 additional firearms, explosives and several thousand rounds of ammo.
Horrific footage of the attack showed the aftermath of the killing spree. Scores of bleeding people, some covered in blood, were left on the grass awaiting help.
Other concertgoers lugged the wounded toward the gates and medical help. Five Las Vegas hospitals were soon inundated with hundreds and hundreds of wounded.
Rep. Ruben Kihuen (D-Nev.) was astounded by the sheer volume of patients in Las Vegas.
“Literally, every single bed was being used, every single hallway was being used,” he said. “Every single person there was trying to save a life.”
Aldean released a statement hours after fleeing the stage that he and his band escaped unharmed.
“Tonight has been beyond horrific,” he said via Insta-
dead piling up, blood everywhere: tonight’s been beyond horrific
gram. “I still don’t know what to say but wanted to let everyone know that me and my crew are safe.”
By midafternoon, guests were admitted back inside the Mandalay Bay — where all levels but the 32nd floor were reopened.
The bodies of all 59 victims were moved in vans to the coroner’s office, where autopsies will be performed and the families will eventually claim the bodies of their loved ones.
Identification will be a “long, laborious process,” authorities warned.
The Monday investigation centered on four locations: The room where Paddock made his last stand; his two homes, in Mesquite and Reno, and the concertturned-crime scene.
As the day went on and more details emerged, one question remained: Why? Authorities said there was too much else to consider at this point.
“I can’t get into the mind of a psychopath right now,” the sheriff said.