Stylist: Client spoke of concert attack
LAS VEGAS — A hairstylist said a client with the same last name as the Las Vegas shooter spoke in the months before the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history about a concert venue being susceptible to attack, according to documents released by police Wednesday.
Las Vegas police released about 2,100 pages of police reports, witness statements and dispatch records after losing court battles to keep them secret. Witness names were blacked out, so their accounts could not be verified, and police and FBI officials said they would not comment on the newly released information.
The documents did not immediately yield answers to the key unanswered question more than seven months after the Oct. 1 attack that is still under investigation: a motive.
They recount tales of horror and heroism, chaos and confusion. They detail how officers responded to the massacre, initially believing the Las Vegas Strip faced large-scale attack by multiple shooters and struggling to direct panicked people to safety and help save victims who were bleeding, begging for help and getting trampled.
Authorities have not determined what led Stephen Paddock to open fire from his high-rise hotel room onto an outdoor concert below, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds more. Police and the FBI said they believe he acted alone and the attack had no link to international terrorism.
The hairstylist told investigators on Oct. 10 that a client named Paddock mentioned during a haircut in June or July that someone could shoot into a crowd at the outdoor concert venue from the casino across the way.
A woman later arrived, and the stylist believed it was Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley.
“I asked her, ‘Do you know what he’s been saying to me?’” the stylist told police. “She’s like, ‘Oh, what, about somebody shooting into a crowd and, you know, wanting to hurt a lot of people?’”
The stylist told police that the client said, “I wonder what she’s worried about? She’ll be out of the country.”
Danley was in the Philippines during the shooting. Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, elected head of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, said earlier this year that he did not expect criminal charges against Danley. She had been called the only person of interest in the case.
The stylist reported feeling uneasy and calling police about the comments but couldn’t say when and wasn’t positive of doing so. Police say in the interview that there’s no record of a call.
The documents also detailed gripping tales, including one from an officer who heard rapid gunfire on his radio and arrived to find hundreds of people running at him, many of them wounded and screaming.
Other officers said they crouched behind patrol vehicles, unable to determine where gunfire was coming from while a rear window shattered and bullets hit the ground around them. A rookie officer, Brady Cook, was wounded in the arm. Detective Casey Clarkson was struck in the neck.