Tracer evidence
Shooter bought illuminating ammo
Las Vegas mass murderer Stephen Paddock bought 1,000 rounds of tracer ammo — which gives shooters greater accuracy in the dark — less than a month before his massacre, a law-enforcement official said Friday.
Investigators found the tracer rounds in his hotel room along with a document naming the Mesa, Ariz., man who sold him the ammo. Paddock met the unidentified man at a Phoenix gun show and bought the .308-caliber and .223-caliber bullets from him on Sept. 9 and Sept. 10.
It’s unclear if Paddock, 64, actually used the bullets, which have a pyrotechnic charge that, when the round is fired, leaves an illuminated trace of its path.
The ammo is commonly used in the military, allowing its trajectory to be visible to the shooter, day or night. It is loaded as every fifth round in assault-rifle magazines or machine-gun belts partly because it can overheat the gun. Also, the bullets are very costly.
The rounds would have provided Paddock with greater accuracy by illuminating their path to their targets in the darkness.
In addition to the 23 weapons in his Mandalay Bay hotel suite, Paddock had 50 pounds of the explosive tannerite and 1,600 rounds of ammo in his car nearby, fueling suspicion that he had planned to survive — and launch more mayhem.
“I don’t know what he was going to do with all that tanner- ite,” said Kevin McMahill, undersheriff of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
Las Vegas authorities said on Friday that they have still no clear motive in Sunday’s massacre, which left 58 people dead and more than 500 wounded.
“I can assure you that we are aware of all aspects of this case,” McMahill explained, adding that authorities have chased down more than a thousand leads.
Investigators had been working to determine if someone else was in Paddock’s 32nd-floor hotel room — in part because a power charger that doesn’t fit any of his electronic devices was found inside, according to NBC News. McMahill said Friday that police are “confident” there was not a second shooter in his room.
Authorities are still exploring Paddock’s mental-health history, the undersheriff added.