Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Could Vegas deaths have been reduced?
Revised timeline raises questions over swiftness of officers’ response to shooter.
The revised timeline given by investigators for the Las Vegas massacre raises questions about whether better communication might have allowed police to respond more quickly and take out the gunman before he could kill and wound so many people.
On Monday, Sheriff Joe Lombardo said Stephen Paddock shot and wounded a Mandalay Bay security guard outside his door and sprayed 200 bullets down the hall six minutes before he opened fire Oct. 1 from his suite on a crowd at a country music festival below.
That was a different account from the one police gave last week: that Paddock shot the guard, Jesus Campos, after firing on the crowd, where 58 people were killed and hundreds injured.
The sheriff had previously hailed Campos as a “hero” whose arrival in the hallway may have led Paddock to stop firing. But on Monday, Lombardo said he didn’t know what prompted Paddock to end the gunfire and take his own life.
How crucial were the minutes that elapsed before the massacre began?
“This changes everything,” said Joseph Giacalone, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former New York City police sergeant. “There absolutely was an opportunity in that timeframe that some of this could’ve been mitigated.”
Giacalone added: “By engaging the shooter ahead of time during this event, it could’ve saved a lot of heartache.”
Meanwhile, one of the nation’s leading gun-control groups has filed a lawsuit against the makers and sellers of “bump stocks,” the devices used by Paddock in what is now the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence filed the lawsuit on behalf of victims of the Oct. 1 shooting in Las Vegas. The lawsuit claims that the leading manufacturer of the devices misled federal authorities about their intended purpose and marketed them to thrill-seeking gun enthusiasts who wanted the experience of firing a fully automatic weapon that is otherwise greatly restricted under federal law.
The lawsuit was filed Friday in Clark County District Court in Nevada; it has three named plaintiffs — all victims of the shooting — and seeks classaction status. It’s not the first time that the Brady Center has filed a lawsuit after a high-profile shooting.
Slide Fire Solutions, the Texas-based company that is considered the top manufacturer of “bump stocks” did not return an email message sent Tuesday through its Facebook page seeking comment. Its voicemail box was not accepting messages and the company has not commented since the shooting took place.
Police released few details about the new timeline and did not respond to questions from The Associated Press, including whether anyone from the hotel called 911 to report the hallway shooting.
“I can tell you I’m confident that he was not able to fully execute his heinous plan and it certainly had everything to do with being disrupted,” McMahill said. He added: “I don’t think the hotel dropped the ball.”