Live Briefing

Las Vegas Shooting Live Updates: Multiple

Weapons Found in Gunmans Hotel Room
By THE NEW YORK TIMESUPDATED 7:18 AM

Mass Shooting in Las Vegas

At least 59 people were killed and hundreds injured when a gunman opened fire at a
country music festival near the Mandalay Bay casino.

LAS VEGAS A gunman on a high floor of a Las Vegas hotel rained a

rapid-fire barrage on an outdoor concert festival on Sunday night, leaving
at least 59 people dead, injuring 527 others, and sending thousands of
terrified survivors fleeing for cover, in one of the deadliest mass shootings
in American history.

Online video of the attack near the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
showed the singer Jason Aldeans performance at the Route 91 Harvest
Festival, a three-day country music event, being interrupted by the sound
of gunfire. The music stopped, and as victims fell bleeding, concertgoers
screamed, ducked for cover, or ran. Get down, one shouted. Stay down,
screamed another.

The police found the gunman, whom they identified as Stephen Paddock,
64, dead in his room at the hotel. Investigators were still combing through
Mr. Paddocks background and searching his home on Monday.

The Islamic State claimed that Mr. Paddock was one of its soldiers, but
did not provide any evidence of its claim. The F.B.I. said there was no
evidence so far that Mr. Paddock had ties to any international terrorist
organization, and relatives said he had not displayed strong political or
ideological beliefs in their interactions with him.

Speaking at the White House, President Trump condemned the

shooting as an act of pure evil and called for the country to come
together, saying, Our unity cannot be shattered by evil, our bonds cannot
be broken by violence.

Tending to the wounded outside the festival ground. CreditDavid Becker/Getty Images

The police found an arsenal in the gunmans hotel room.

At least 23 firearms, including a handgun, were found in Mr. Paddocks

hotel suite, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
Some were rifles equipped with scopes, said Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of
the Police Department, adding that Mr. Paddock used multiple rifles
during the attack.
 A federal law enforcement official earlier said there were at least 20 rifles
in the suite, along with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, including two
rifles outfitted with scopes and set up on tripods in front of two big
windows. Another official said that among the weapons were AR-15-style
assault rifles. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because
they were not authorized to divulge details of the investigation.

Sheriff Lombardo said that Mr. Poddack brought in at least 10 suitcases

into his hotel room over a period of time.

Sheriff Lombardo said that Mr. Paddock fired through his hotel room door
at security guards, striking one in the leg. The guard is still alive, he said.
SWAT officers went in after the guard was shot.

In addition to the weapons at the hotel, the sheriff said the police retrieved
19 firearms, as well as explosives, several thousand rounds of ammunition
and electronic devices from Mr. Paddocks home in Mesquite, Nev.

Who was the gunman?

Mr. Paddock, 64, was described as a high-flying gambler who lived in a

quiet retirement community and played golf. Officials said he had no
significant criminal history and drew little attention to himself.

Investigators are trying to piece together his financial history to search for
clues that could help determine what set him off.

Details about Mr. Paddocks career and livelihood were sparse, aside from
observations by neighbors and family members that he routinely gambled
large amounts of money. He was a wealthy guy, playing video poker, who
went cruising all the time and lived in a hotel room, a brother, Eric
Paddock, said.

Photo

Stephen Paddock in a photo provided by his brother Eric Paddock. Creditvia Associated
Press
 Mr. Paddock and his three brothers were raised by their mother, who told
the children their father had died when in fact he was in prison, Eric
Paddock said. Mr. Paddocks father was convicted in 1961 of committing a
series of bank robberies, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, but
escaped from La Tuna federal prison in Texas in 1968 and then became a
used-car dealer and bingo parlor operator in Oregon.

The family moved around the country, from Iowa to Tucson to Southern
California, another brother, Patrick Paddock II, said.

In an interview with CBS, Eric Paddock said that his brother Stephen was
not an avid gun guy at all.

The fact that he had those kind of weapons is just where the hell did he
get automatic weapons? he asked.

Guests at the Mandalay Bay are in shock.

The hotel was on partial lockdown Monday. While guests were allowed in
the hotel through the parking structure in the back of the complex, the
exits to the Strip were closed.

The casino floor was largely empty, though a few gamblers played slots.
Several guests napped on couches, some covered in towels and bathrobes
they had been given overnight.

A bellman at the hotel said the gunmans car was still in the valet, which
had been shut down.

Melissa Ayala, 41, came to the country music festival with four friends
from Orange, Calif. They were drinking and laughing when they heard
what they thought was fireworks. She did not realize it was gunfire until a
man near them was grazed by a bullet and fell to the ground, blood coming
from his neck.

It seemed like rapid fire, she said. There was blood pouring
everywhere.

Continue reading the main story

Photo

Officers ran to the scene of the shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday night. CreditJohn
Locher/Associated Press

What about the ISIS claim?

The Islamic State claimed on Monday that the gunman was a Soldier of
the Islamic State, but the group did not provide any evidence for its claim.
The group has generally claimed violence carried out only by those
directed by the terrorist group, or else by assailants who were inspired by
 their ideology. However, in recent months, the group has made at least two
false claims, including for an attack on a casino in Manila and a bomb plot
at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

Aaron Rouse, the F.B.I. special agent in charge in Las Vegas, said that so
far there was no proof that Mr. Paddock had links to any international
terrorist organization.

Citing a source, the terror groups Amaq news agency said the assailant
had responded to calls for targeting Coalition countries.

That phrase is a reference to a famous 2014 speech by Abu Muhammad al-

Adnani, a former Islamic State spokesman, who called for sympathizers
around the world to carry out violence in the groups name on the soil of
countries involved in the fight against ISIS.

In a second bulletin about the Las Vegas shooting, Amaq said the attacker
had converted to Islam months earlier.

Photo

Debris and belongings that had been left behind littered the site of the mass shooting in
Las Vegas on Monday. CreditJohn Locher/Associated Press

The gunman recently bought several weapons.

 Christopher Sullivan, general manager of Guns & Guitars, a gun shop in
Mesquite, Nev., said confirmed that Mr. Paddock had bought three guns at
his shop a handgun and two rifles within the last year. All the
purchases were legal and cleared routine federal screening, Mr. Sullivan
said.

The man does not have a criminal history, Mr. Sullivan said of Mr.
Paddock.

Mr. Sullivan, who said he had also been contacted by the F.B.I. and the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, would not provide
detailed descriptions of the guns. We have cooperated with local and
federal authorities, he said.

He described Mr. Paddock as seeming like a normal fellow, a normal guy

nothing out of the ordinary.

As for what goes on in a persons mind, I couldnt tell you, Mr. Sullivan
said. I know nothing about him personally.

GRAPHIC
The Las Vegas Massacre: Shots, Chaos and a Frantic
Search for a Gunman
The attack was one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history.

OPEN GRAPHIC

How did the shooting unfold?

The first reports of the shooting came at 10:08 p.m. local time. Officers
were overheard on police radio channels reporting that they were pinned
down by gunfire. Shortly before midnight, the Las Vegas police reported
that one suspect is down, and soon after, the police said they did not
believe there were any more active gunmen.

The Route 91 Harvest Festival bills itself as three days of country music on
the Vegas Strip, and Sunday nights performance was the last of the
festival. The site of the concert, the Las Vegas Village and Festival
Grounds, operated by MGM Resorts, sprawls over 15 acres and has a
capacity of 40,000 people. The festivals website said this years three-day
concert was sold out.

Tenaja Floyd of Boise, Idaho, said many of the people around her in the
concert crowd thought at first that the sounds came from fireworks, but I
knew immediately, that wasnt fireworks. She said her mother, Jennifer,
threw her to the ground and lay on top of her to protect her. As people
started running out of the venue, she said, they thought they might be
trampled, so they decided to join the rush to leave.

Video of the shooting captured nine seconds of continuous rapid fire,

followed by 37 seconds of silence from the weapon and panicked
screaming from the crowd. Gunfire then erupted again in at least two more
bursts, both shorter than the first.

The police reported clearing out the Mandalay Bays 29th floor and then
working their way up to the 32nd floor. A police Twitter post described
reports of an active shooter near or around the Mandalay Bay casino.

SWAT units swarmed the upper floors of the Mandalay Bay, closing in on
the source of the shooting, a room on the 32nd floor where they found the
gunman, the sheriff said. We believe the individual killed himself prior to
our entry.

Video from the shooting showed Mr. Aldean, the final performer of the
night, running off the stage as the gunfire erupted.

Jake Owen, a country singer who was on stage with Mr. Aldean when the
shooting began, told CNN on Monday that it was like shooting fish in a
barrel from where he was.

This is not an exaggeration: This shooting was going on for at least 10

minutes, he added. It was nonstop.

Concertgoers described hearing round after round of gunfire. Everyone

was running, you could see people getting shot, Gail Davis, one of the
witnesses, said. Ive never been that scared in my life, she added. To
have this happen, I cant wrap my mind around it.

A Hospital Deals With the Victims

 The surge of patients at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, within
walking distance of the concert, was almost unthinkable. In the first hours,
90 patients arrived at the Level Two trauma center, and by noon on
Monday, the total was 180.

Of those, 124 met the criteria for trauma activation, said Dr. Jeff
Murawsky, the hospitals chief medical officer. They included patients with
single and multiple gunshot wounds to the head, face, chest, body, arms
and, in one case, a finger.

The less severely injured included those who fell or were pushed as they
ran. By Monday afternoon, 16 patients had died, some on arrival and
others after being treated.

Patients were sorted on arrival in the lobby of the emergency room using a
scale of one most critical to five, a system used daily that Dr.
Murawsky said helped in the emergency. A separate area at Sunrise was
created for those whom the doctors deemed unsalvageable. Still, Dr.
Murawsky said, our trauma surgeons dont feel like we were ever in a
situation where we werent able to do our best.

Reporting was contributed by Ken Belson, Jennifer Medina and John Eligon from Las
Vegas; Julie Turkewitz from Mesquite, Nev.; Vivian Yee, Jonah Engel Bromwich,
Stephanie Saul, Matthew Haag, Rukmini Callimachi, Sheri Fink and Richard Prez-
Pea from New York; Gerry Mullany, Russell Goldman, Austin Ramzy, Alexandra
Stevenson and Tiffany May from Hong Kong; Adam Goldman and Eric Schmitt from
Washington; Liam Stack from London; and Lizette Alvarez from Miami.