High-rise sniper kills at least 58 at Las Vegas concert
Posted: October 2, 2017 - 4:36pm

Mandalay Bay resort and casino towers over the festival area.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Latest on the shooting in Las Vegas (all times local):

3:10 p.m.

The owner of a gun shop in Mesquite, Nevada, says the Las Vegas shooter bought firearms there and never gave any indication that he might have been unstable.

Guns & Guitars general manager Christopher Sullivan said in a statement Monday that 64-year-old Stephen Craig Paddock showed no signs of being unfit to buy guns.

Store spokesman Shawn Vincent declined comment on how many guns Paddock bought and said those details could only be shared with authorities.

Sullivan says all necessary background checks and procedures were followed under local, state and federal laws and that he's cooperating fully with law enforcement.

Paddock lived in a house in a retirement community in the small city of Mesquite.

A Utah gun store owner has said Paddock visited his shop about a 40-minute drive from Mesquite and purchased a shotgun.

___

3:05 p.m.

Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo says 59 people have been killed and 527 injured in a mass shooting Sunday night at an outdoor country music festival in Las Vegas.

Lombardo also says investigators found 18 firearms, explosives and several thousand rounds of ammunition in the home of suspected shooter Stephen Craig Paddock in Mesquite, Nevada.

The incident was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

___

2:35 p.m.

Big U.S. airlines are allowing passengers to change their plans for flights to or from Las Vegas without facing penalties following the worst mass shooting in recent U.S. history.

American Airlines, Delta Airlines and Alaska Airlines said Monday that they are offering waivers through Tuesday. A waiver from United Airlines lasts through Friday.

The Nevada Department of Tourism and Cultural Affairs released a statement Monday offering condolences to the victims of the shooting at a country music festival.

The statement says: "We know that Las Vegas will shine again, but for now we mourn the tragedy it has endured in this dark time."

The department says it is offering support to local businesses that rely on tourism.

___

2:25 p.m.

Two officials familiar with the investigation say authorities found at least 17 guns in the hotel room of the Las Vegas shooter.

Stephen Paddock also had two devices that are attached to the stocks of semi-automatic guns to allow fully automatic gunfire. The bump-stock devices have attracted scrutiny in recent years from authorities.

The U.S. officials were briefed by law enforcement and spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Paddock killed 58 people and wounded hundreds more in the massacre that targeted a country music concert.

___

2:20 p.m.

The owner of a Utah gun store says the Las Vegas shooter visited the store several times this year and bought a shotgun after passing a federal gun background check.

Dixie GunWorx owner Chris Michel says Stephen Craig Paddock said that he was new to the area and was visiting local gun shops.

Paddock bought the shotgun in February and last visited the store in St. George, Utah, in the spring. It's a 40-minute drive from where Paddock lived in Mesquite, Nevada.

Michel says he chatted with Paddock to get to know him and make sure there were no signs that he should not be allowed to buy a gun.

Michel says: "There were no red flags."

He added: "I had no idea he would be capable of this."

___

2:05 p.m.

Officials are still loading bodies into vans to remove them from the scene of the Las Vegas shooting that killed at least 58 people.

The work continued more than 12 hours after a gunman opened fire from the Mandalay Bay hotel into a crowd of thousands of people at a country music concert.

Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo has said the hundreds of people who were wounded were taken to five southern Nevada hospitals.

Police have warned that identifying bodies from the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history will be a long, laborious process.

___

1:55 p.m.

The brother of the shooter in the mass Las Vegas shooting says Stephen Craig Paddock was a big spender at casinos and often received free rooms and meals from the casinos.

Eric Paddock told reporters Monday his brother never showed signs that he could be violent and owned several guns but never collected firearms.

He described the wealth of his multimillionaire brother as substantial, said it included real estate and that he managed property for relatives.

Eric Paddock also described his brother as different than other people: "He was a guy who had money. He went on cruises and gambled."

He says Stephen Craig Paddock did not care about religion or politics.

__

1:25 p.m.

A brother of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Craig Paddock says he was a multimillionaire who made much of his money investing in real estate.

Eric Paddock told reporters Monday in Orlando that his brother was also an accountant for many years.

He was not aware of his brother having any recent financial difficulties.

Stephen Craig Paddock recently sent a walker by mail to his 90-year-old mother.

The brother says the shooter collected coins when he was a child.

Police have said the suspect killed at least 58 people in the worst mass shooting in recent U.S. history.

___

12:45 p.m.

The father of suspected Las Vegas gunman Stephen Craig Paddock operated an Oregon bingo parlor after escaping from a Texas prison in the late 1960s.

Benjamin Hoskins Paddock was put on the FBI most wanted list after the escape.

An Oregon Supreme Court opinion from 1981 says FBI agents him on Sept. 6, 1978, at the Bingo Center in the small city of Springfield. He went by different names and was identified by the court as Patrick Benjamin Paddock.

Despite the escape, Paddock was paroled the following year and returned to Oregon. He continued the bingo operation until authorities shut it down in 1987 and charged him with racketeering.

Don Bishoff, a columnist for The Register-Guard of Eugene, wrote in 1998 that Paddock pleaded no contest to the charges, but he received no jail time. He wrote that Paddock spent the last decade of his life in Texas.

The columnist described Paddock as one of the Eugene-Springfield area's "most colorful rogues." Paddock was also known as Bruce Ericksen.

Police say his oldest son killed at least 58 people in Las Vegas in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. More than 500 were wounded.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A gunman on the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas hotel-casino rained heavy fire down on a crowd of over 22,000 at an outdoor country music festival, turning the expanse into a killing field from which there was little escape. At least 58 people died.

It was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. At least 515 people were injured.

The FBI discounted the possibility of international terrorism, even after the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. But beyond that, the motive remained a mystery, with Sheriff Joseph Lombardo saying: "I can't get into the mind of a psychopath at this point."

Concertgoers screamed and ran for their lives Sunday night outside the 44-story Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino after hearing what at first sounded like firecrackers but turned out to be dozens of bullets in rapid-fire bursts, perhaps from an automatic weapon.

SWAT teams using explosives stormed the gunman's hotel room in the gold-colored glass skyscraper and found he had killed himself. The attacker, Stephen Craig Paddock, a 64-year-old retiree from Mesquite, Nevada, had as many as 10 guns with him, including rifles.

Country music star Jason Aldean was performing at the Route 91 Harvest Festival when the gunman apparently used a hammer-like device to smash out windows in his room and opened fire, the muzzle flashes visible in the dark, authorities said.

The crowd, funneled tightly into a wide-open space, had little cover and no easy way to escape. Some victims fell to the ground, while others fled in panic. Some hid behind concession stands. Others crawled under parked cars.

After the first burst of gunfire, the music stopped, Aldean left the stage, and many of those in the crowd looked on in confusion. Then the shooting resumed about half a minute later.

"It was the craziest stuff I've ever seen in my entire life," said Kodiak Yazzie, 36. "You could hear that the noise was coming from west of us, from Mandalay Bay. You could see a flash, flash, flash, flash."

Monique Dumas, of British Columbia, Canada, said she was six rows from the stage when she heard what she thought was a bottle breaking, then a popping that sounded to her like fireworks.

Couples held hands as they ran through the dirt lot. Faces were etched with shock and confusion, and people wept and screamed. Some were bloodied, and some were carried out by fellow concertgoers. Dozens of ambulances took away the wounded, while some people loaded victims into their cars and drove them to the hospital.

Some of the injured were hit by shrapnel. Others were trampled in the mass panic.

The shooter appeared to fire unhindered for more than 10 minutes as Las Vegas police frantically tried to locate the man in one of the Mandalay Bay hotel towers, according to radio traffic. For several minutes, officers could not tell whether the fire was coming from Mandalay Bay or the neighboring Luxor hotel.

Investigators gave few details on the weapons used but reported over the radio that they were faced with fully automatic fire.

In an address to the country, President Donald Trump called the attack "an act of pure evil" and added: "In moments of tragedy and horror, America comes together as one. And it always has." He ordered flags flown at half-staff.

Hospital emergency rooms were jammed with the wounded. Rep. Ruben Kihuen, a Democrat whose congressional district includes part of Las Vegas, visited a hospital and said: "Literally, every single bed was being used, every single hallway was being used. Every single person there was trying to save a life."

Las Vegas authorities put out a call for blood donations and set up a hotline to report missing people and speed the identification of the dead and wounded. They also opened a "family reunification center" for people to find loved ones.

The dead included at least three off-duty police officers from various departments who were attending the concert, authorities said. Two on-duty officers were wounded, one critically, police said.

"It's a devastating time," the sheriff said.

In its claim of responsibility, the Islamic State group said the gunman was "a soldier" who had converted to Islam months ago. But it provided no evidence.

And FBI agent Aaron Rouse said investigators had seen nothing so far to connect the attack to any international terror organization.

The Islamic State has been known to make unsubstantiated claims of responsibility for attacks around the world.

It previously said it was responsible for a June attack on a Manila casino and shopping complex where 37 died, mostly from smoke inhalation — a claim rejected by authorities, who said the lone attacker was a heavily indebted Filipino gambling addict.

The sheriff said authorities believe the Las Vegas bloodbath was a "lone wolf" attack but want to talk to Paddock's roommate, a woman Lombardo said was out of the country at the time of the attack.

Lombardo said a check of federal and state databases showed the gunman was not on law enforcement authorities' radar before the bloodbath.

Paddock lived in a retirement community, owned rental properties, held a private pilot's license and liked to travel to Las Vegas to play high-stakes video poker.

As for why he went on the murderous rampage, his brother in Florida, Eric Paddock, told reporters: "I can't even make something up. There's just nothing."

While Paddock appeared to have no criminal history, his father was a bank robber who was on the FBI's most-wanted list after escaping from prison in Texas in the 1960s.

Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said the Sunday night attack was the work of a "crazed lunatic full of hate."

Interstate 15 was briefly closed, and flights at McCarran International Airport were suspended for a while.

Nearly every inch of the Las Vegas Strip is under video surveillance, much of it set up by the casinos to monitor their properties. That could yield a wealth of material for investigators.

Hours after the shooting, Aldean posted on Instagram that he and his crew were safe and that the shooting was "beyond horrific."

"It hurts my heart that this would happen to anyone who was just coming out to enjoy what should have been a fun night," the country star said.

Before Sunday, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history took place in June 2016, when a gunman who professed support for Muslim extremist groups opened fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people.

A suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, killed 22 people in May. Almost 90 people were killed in 2015 at a concert in Paris by gunmen inspired by the Islamic State.