Las Vegas gunman may have looked at Fenway
Las Vegas — Investigators are looking into whether gunman Stephen Paddock scoped out bigger music festivals in Las Vegas and Chicago — and perhaps Boston’s Fenway Park — before setting up his perch in a casino hotel and raining deadly fire on country music fans.
Paddock booked rooms overlooking the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago in August and the Life Is Beautiful show near the Vegas Strip in late September, according to authorities reconstructing his movements before he undertook the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
It was not clear if he contemplated massacres at those sites.
Investigators looking into Paddock also came across mention of Fenway Park, Boston police Lt. Detective Mike McCarthy said, though he provided no further details.
The details came to light as investigators struggled to figure out why the high-stakes gambler opened fire on a crowd of 22,000 Sunday night from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel casino in Las Vegas. He killed 58 people and injured nearly 500 before taking his own life.
A federal official said authorities are looking into the possibility Paddock planned additional attacks, including a car bombing. The official wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Authorities previously disclosed Paddock had 1,600 rounds of ammunition in his car, along with fertilizer that can be used to make explosives and 50 pounds of Tannerite, a substance used in explosive rifle targets.
Paddock had an arsenal of 23 weapons in his hotel room. A dozen of them included “bump stocks,” attachments that can effectively convert semi-automatic rifles into fully automated weapons.
In a rare concession on gun control, the National Rifle Association announced its support Thursday for regulating the devices.
Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, told FBI agents Wednesday she had not noticed any changes in his mental state or indications he could become violent, the federal official said.
Paddock sent Danley on a trip to her native Philippines before the attack, and she was unaware of his plans and devastated when she learned of the carnage while overseas, she said in a statement.
Investigators combing through his background for clues remain stumped as to his motive.
The profile developed so far is of a “disturbed and dangerous” man who acquired an arsenal over decades, Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said. But investigators have been frustrated to find that he lived a “secret life,” Lombardo said, “much of which will never be fully understood.”
A former executive casino host at the Atlantis Casino Resort and Spa in Reno said Paddock had a “god complex” and expected quick service without regard to how busy the staff was at the time.
“He liked everybody to think that he was the guy,” John Weinreich said. “He didn’t boast about anything he had or anything. It was just his demeanor. It was like, ‘I’m here. Don’t cross me. Don’t look at me too long.’”