Gunman lived and breathed Las Vegas

Before UNLV attack, former students say, Anthony Polito had deep fondness, even obsession for Sin City.

Even before their former business professor carried out a mass shooting at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, onetime students of Anthony Polito said his classes were not something they would forget.

There were the regular reminders to his students at East Carolina University to leave him flattering reviews on ratemyprofessors.com — and the disparaging of past “disgruntled” students who had left less-than-glowing ones. He was one of the few professors they knew who taught in a suit and cuff links and the only one who smoked an e-cigarette — once wordlessly blowing the vapor on a bewildered student. And what now feels like the most significant memory from those days: a deep love of — some said obsession with — Las Vegas.

Students at the Greenville, N.C., university said that when Polito, 67, would boot up his computer, there was always a Las Vegas-themed wallpaper on the screen. He would tell them about his upcoming bookings at the Wynn and the steak from room service he planned to order upon arrival. Some said they would have entire classes dedicated exclusively to his weekend excursions.

“All the lectures just became based around Las Vegas,” said Paul Whittington, who took Polito’s class on supply chain management in 2014. “It was slideshows of: ‘These are places that I’d stayed. These are things that I’ve done. These are clubs that I’ve been to.’ ”

But Polito struggled to make the transition from eager tourist to permanent Sin City resident. After moving to Vegas from North Carolina, law enforcement said, Polito had difficulty finding a job and was at risk of losing his home in the city’s suburbs.

On Dec. 6, with an eviction notice pinned to his front door, Polito walked onto the campus of UNLV — one of several Nevada schools that law enforcement officials said had rejected him for a job — with a 9mm handgun. In the span of a few minutes, he fatally shot three faculty members in the business school, identified as Cha-Jan “Jerry” Chang, 64, Patricia Navarro-Velez, 39, and Naoko Takemaru, 69. A visiting professor was critically injured. Law enforcement said Polito had maintained a list of targets of both UNLV and East Carolina University staff.

Days after the shooting, investigators are continuing to examine how a former professor so infatuated with Las Vegas that he made it part of his lectures had become a gunman who targeted its residents.

Past students said they were shocked when national outlets began broadcasting Polito’s picture, with his gelled-back hair and signature crisp white shirt, above a banner announcing multiple gunshot deaths at a college campus.

“I recognized his face immediately. My mouth just dropped, and my heart just sank,” said Erick Smithwick, who took one of Polito’s courses around 2006 and remembered him as one of his more passionate and approachable professors. “I still don’t believe it.”

According to his LinkedIn page, Polito left East Carolina University around 2017 after more than a decade and a half with the school. On his personal website, he described himself as a “semi-retired” professor who had made two dozen trips to Las Vegas and had “collected more information and trivia about Vegas than probably anyone in this state east of I-95” thanks to his “steel trap mind.”

“I don’t gamble that much, but there is plenty to do there, that’s for sure!!” he wrote.

Upon arriving in the city, Polito landed at an apartment complex in Henderson — a world away from the Strip he loved, where neighbors said he seemed isolated and aloof.

“He was a little out of place for these crummy apartments,” said Greg Gibson, who saw Polito the morning of the shooting, smoking and pacing in the parking lot.

Most neighbors interviewed said they knew him as the hermit-like guy with a briefcase and a vanity plate that read “KAPEESH” — which led some to refer to him as “Mafia dude.”

On a list posted on his website, Polito wrote that he wanted a plate that emphasized “persistence/determination.”

“I considered SENSEI, the Japanese term for teacher… but it was already taken,” he wrote on the list detailing every car — all 21 — he’d ever owned. “‘Kapeesh’ seemed to go with a big black car driven by a New York Italian.”

At the end of a week of job searching, Polito would often go to the Village Pub, a 24-hour bar a few blocks from his house.

Sometimes he was still there when Gina Stapley, the bar manager, showed up for her 7 a.m. shift. She said Polito would tell her his resume was not getting the warm reception he hoped for — despite his being “highly scholared.”

Las Vegas Metropolitan Sheriff Kevin McMahill told reporters Thursday that Polito had applied “numerous times” for a job with Nevada schools and been rejected from each one.

Robert Martin, a 38-yearold accountant who took Polito’s marketing class in 2011, said the repeated dead ends may have been especially bitter for Polito, who seemed to have so much of his identity tied up with the city.

“I mean he loved Vegas,” Martin said. “Maybe he felt like this is where I belong. … Now I get to teach here, then somebody took it away from me.”