ENGLEWOOD POLICE OFFICER WOUNDED
VEGAS» A veteran Englewood LAS police officer who was shot and injured while attending the Jason Aldean concert in Las Vegas Sunday night is expected to survive his injuries, a family member said.
Curtis Leoni, 52, who has been an Englewood police officer for about 25 years, called his sister and told her he had been wounded, but did not have life-threatening injuries. His sister asked not to be identified because she works as a correctional officer.
“He’s going to be fine,” she said. “He was out there enjoying the concert, and he got caught up in the mayhem.”
Leoni, who lives in Highlands Ranch, was one of 22,000 attending the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival when Stephen Paddock, 64, allegedly began firing what sounded like automatic weapons from the 32nd floor of the nearby Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. Paddock allegedly shot Leoni and nearly 600 other people including 59 who died.
Blood donations up locally.
Local blood donations in Colorado were up on Monday, the day after the massacre in Las Vegas.
Bonfils Blood Center stands ready to send blood to Las Vegas if needed, the organization said in a news release.
In Las Vegas, United Blood Services provided nearly 200 units of blood and blood products to local hospitals treating victims of the shooting.
In Colorado donations were up on Monday as people went to Bonfils donor centers and mobile blood drives to give blood.
“There have been a number of people who have walked in an said: “I heard about what happened in Las Vegas,’ “said Liz Lambert, a Bonfils spokeswoman. “They want to show their support in some way.”
As part of the Blood Systems Blood Services division, Bonfils is included in a multi-state system of blood centers, the release said, moving lifesaving donations throughout the system to help ensure blood is available when and where it’s needed most.
As of 1:30 p.m. Monday, Bonfils had 496 people come into donor centers and mobile blood drives to donate or register. Last Monday, 371 people either registered or donated. On Monday Oct. 3, 2016, 350 people donated for registered.
People interested in donating can visit bonfils.org or call 303363-2300.
False news about gunman spread on Google, Facebook.
False news that erroneously named a suspect in the deadly Las Vegas mass shooting on Sunday spread on Google and Facebook before the services removed the posts in question, the two companies acknowledged Monday.
Erroneous posts on both services — one highlighted by Google’s “Top Stories” search results, the other circulated by Facebook users — falsely identified the shooter as an apparently uninvolved person.
A story by the pro-Trump political website “The Gateway Pundit” named a different person as the shooter, citing a Facebook page to claim the individual was “a far left loon” and “a Democrat who liked (MSNBC host) Rachel Maddow.” Posters on the anonymous, anarchic 4chan.org forum likewise trumpeted supposed findings that the same individual was both the shooter and a “social democrat.” BuzzFeed saved screenshots of the stories, which no longer turn up on either Gateway Pundit or 4chan.
Google said in a statement that it highlighted 4chan’s “Politically Incorrect” message board, where the incorrect posts appeared, for several hours before its search algorithm replaced it with more relevant results. The 4chan result only appeared if users entered the erroneous name as a query, Google said. The listing did not appear in Google News.
Democrat to revive background-check bill.
Sen. Chris Murphy, whose home state of Connecticut was the site of the 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, said Monday he’ll reintroduce a bill requiring background checks of gun purchasers.
Murphy, a Democrat, said the killings in Las Vegas will pressure Congress to act in some fashion, although he sees little chance the Republican-controlled Congress would pass more stringent measures such as reinstating the assault-weapon ban that lapsed in 2004.
“We are likely better served by focusing on issues like background checks that immediately get more Republican support,” Murphy said. In 2013, he and other senators failed to win Senate passage of a bill to expand background checks after the Sandy Hook shootings that killed 20 children and six adults.
Eiffel Tower dark in bow to Marseille, Las Vegas victims.
The Eiffel Tower went dark to pay homage to the victims of two tragedies: the weekend knife attack in the French port city of Marseille and the mass shooting in Las Vegas. Mayor Anne Hidalgo tweeted Monday that “Tonight we turn off the lights of the Eiffel Tower at midnight” to honor the victims of the two attacks, continuing a practice of bowing in respect to victims of horror by darkening the glittering monument that crowns the City of Light.
CBS fires lawyer for social media comment on Las Vegas.
CBS has fired a corporate lawyer who said on social media about the Las Vegas mass shooting that she wasn’t sympathetic because “country music fans often are Republican guntoters.”
The network said Monday that Hayley Geftman-Gold had violated the company’s standards by expressing deeply unacceptable views. Geftman-Gold was a vice president and senior legal counsel at CBS in New York and had worked there for a year.
Geftman-Gold made the comments on Facebook in connection with a discussion on gun control. She said she had no hope that Republicans would take action if they didn’t do anything when children were murdered, an apparent reference to the Sandy Hook massacre.
Las Vegas shooter’s father was a bank robber and on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.
Decades before Stephen Paddock opened fire from a high-rise hotel near the Las Vegas Strip, his father was one of the FBI’s most-wanted fugitives.
Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, a convicted bank robber and con man described in a wanted poster as “psychopathic’’ with suicidal tendencies, had escaped from prison in 1969, earning him a spot on the FBI’s list of mostsought-after and dangerous criminals. According to news accounts, he was not captured until 1978, when he was nabbed while running a bingo parlor in Oregon. He had been convicted of bank robbery, auto theft and a confidence scam when he escaped from prison Feb. 3, 1969, in El Paso, Texas. At the time, his son Stephen would have been 15 years old.
At 6-foot-4 and 245 pounds, Benjamin Paddock used a host of aliases, and was also known as “Chromedome” and “Old Baldy,” according to his “Wanted” poster.
He remained on the FBI’s Most Wanted list until 1977, when he was removed for reasons that aren’t clear.
Stephen Paddock’s brother, Eric, told reporters outside his Orlando, Florida, home Monday that their father was not around during their childhood. “I was born on the run,’’ he said.