Documents: Vegas shooter railed against federal government, gun control

A body is covered with a sheet after the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history Oct. 1, 2017, in Las Vegas, Nev. Witness accounts of gunfire, chaos, blood, heartbreak and survival emerged in police reports made public May 16, 2018. | File photo by Steve Marcus /Las Vegas Sun via Associated Press, St. George News

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Police documents released Wednesday about the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history included reports from at least two people who said a person they believed to be the gunman ranted in the days prior to last October’s Las Vegas Strip attack about the federal government and gun control.

The claims by those people and others could not be verified because the names of all witnesses were blacked out in the 1,200 pages of police reports and accounts that the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department made public after losing court battles to keep them secret.

People assist a wounded woman at the Tropicana hotel in Las Vegas, Nev., Oct. 1, 2017. | File photo by Chase Stevens/Las Vegas Review-Journal via Associated Press, St. George News

Police and the FBI have not determined a motive in the ongoing investigation. Authorities said they believe Stephen Paddock acted alone and the attack had no link to international terrorism. Law enforcement refused Wednesday to provide any additional information including refusing to say whether the reports were credible.

A jailed man whose gave a statement in November to police and the FBI recalled a man he believed to be Paddock telling him that Federal Emergency Management Agency “camps” set up after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were “a dry run for law enforcement and military to start kickin’ down doors and … confiscating guns.”

“Somebody has to wake up the American public and get them to arm themselves,” the man said Paddock told him less than a month before the Oct. 1 shooting that killed 58 people and injured hundreds. “Sometimes sacrifices have to be made.”

In a handwritten account, a woman said she overheard a man she later said was Paddock talking with another man at a Las Vegas restaurant just three days before the massacre. She told police that Paddock seemed angry about the 1990s standoffs at Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge in Idaho.

Police run toward the scene of a shooting near the Mandalay Bay resort and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas, Nev., Oct. 1, 2017 | Associated Press file photo by John Locher, St. George News

“At the time, I just thought ‘strange guys’ and I wanted to leave,” said the woman.

The documents released Wednesday detailed terror, confusion and compassion among people helping the wounded after gunfire rained from a 32nd floor hotel room on a crowd of 22,000 people attending the Route 91 Harvest Festival concert on the Las Vegas Strip.

One woman told police she refused to leave her lifeless friend, whose eyes were still and lips turned blue, until a group of men picked her off the ground and guided her to a fence. One left a red bandanna on her friend’s face.

A stagehand made a run for his pickup truck when he was suddenly surrounded by people begging for a ride away from the scene. “I told them to get in however they could,” he said.

A woman who fell wounded said another woman who pushed her was shot five times. She decided to play dead. “A good guy just grabbed me and said, ‘Love, you’re gonna die here if I leave you here,'” she told police.

A housekeeper at the Mandalay Bay described her discomfort at Paddock sitting at a table eating soup and staring at her as she cleaned his hotel room four days before the shooting.

Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said early this month the police investigation was not finished. He also apologized to the public for the release of information that he said would “further traumatize a wounded community.”

Police and the FBI refused to answer questions from The Associated Press about the account from the man who said he met with Paddock outside a Las Vegas sporting goods store after posting an online ad to sell schematics to convert semi-automatic guns to fire automatically.

The man said Paddock became upset and launched into a tirade about gun control when the man rejected an offer of $500 apiece to modify semi-automatic guns to fire automatically.

Clark County Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak, who shared the release of public information with Lombardo and FBI Special Agent in Charge Aaron Rouse after the shooting, told the AP on Wednesday he had been assured that no motive has been identified.

Sisolak said he hadn’t heard of the jailhouse account and he could not say whether it was credible.

Las Vegas police two weeks ago made public video from two officers’ body cameras showing police blasting through the door of the hotel suite where Paddock is seen motionless on his back with a pool of blood staining the carpet near his head and a cache of assault-style weapons strewn about.

Media outlets sued to obtain videos, 911 recordings, evidence logs and interview reports to shed light on the response by public agencies, emergency workers and hotel officials during and after the shooting. The department has not provided all the materials it collected.

Written by KEN RITTER and MICHELLE L. PRICE, Associated Press

Associated Press journalists Tom Tait and Regina Garcia Cano in Las Vegas, Brady McCombs in Salt Lake City, Astrid Galvan and Terry Tang in Phoenix, and Felicia Fonseca and Mary Hudetz in Albuquerque, New Mexico contributed to this report.

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @STGnews

Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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13 Comments

  • Brian May 17, 2018 at 8:35 am

    How convenient, an anonymous source says he heard from someone that the Vegas shooter was a perfect caricature of a conservative nutjob.

    This is a pathetic, shameless attempt to add an arrow to the gun control quiver.

    • RadRabbit May 17, 2018 at 9:33 am

      You are spot on my friend.

      • homer498 May 17, 2018 at 11:41 am

        No he’s not BadRabbit. There is no supporting evidence of conspiracy here; and it doesn’t matter what you believe, it only matters what you can prove! This is deffinately a strange & difficult case to tackle; however, the public demands an explantion so they can reassure themselves this is an anomoly that they would never consider; even though, it is a statistical probability that most of us have considered in passing, though as simply a way to calm ourselves and move on. Its a little human nature, a little departure from the mental, psychological, and physological from the norms.

    • Chris May 17, 2018 at 10:09 am

      If you read the article like an intelligent person, you would see that the sources were not anonymous. Their names were included in the police reports, but were redacted in the version released to the press to protect them from conservative nutjobs like you. What is pathetic and shameless is your shallow mind.

      • Brian May 17, 2018 at 12:51 pm

        “A jailed man” … “recalled a man he believed to be Paddock”… THAT is what passes as a “source” to explain the shooters motives?

        A woman recalls overhearing someone at a restaurant ranting about Waco and Ruby Ridge?

        Sorry, if this guys was boiling over with conspiracy theories he’d have gone off left and right everywhere he went, especially to people at gun ranges, gun shows, gun stores, casinos, etc, etc. This would be a huge trend that would have surfaced very soon after the shooting.

        Instead we have a mystery wrapped in an enigma shrouded in secrecy, and months and months of silence. And the story that has been told has changed repeatedly. Sorry if I’m a bit skeptical of their ironclad motives.

        And in case you haven’t been paying attention, the FBI isn’t exactly the most trustworthy organization lately.

        • PatriotLiberal May 17, 2018 at 3:53 pm

          “Sorry, if this guys was boiling over with conspiracy theories he’d have gone off left and right everywhere he went, especially to people at gun ranges, gun shows, gun stores, casinos, etc, etc.”

          I highly doubt that. take a good hard look the next tie you’re at your usual conservative stomping grounds Brian. You’ll quickly find that most of those theories lie right next to all the liberal bashing opinions disguised as news.

  • Lastdays May 17, 2018 at 11:15 am

    So lets say that the reports of him having voices in his head telling him that FEMA camps are for people leftover from Government Agencies kicking down doors and taking guns is true. And whatever else kinds of stories that have came out that he may have believed in.
    It still doesn’t explain the motivation to start shooting at people from a hotel room window. That makes no sense at all. Those 2 actions don’t equate.
    If he had any respect at all for the Rights and Freedoms of all Americans, and the 2nd Amendment especially, he wouldn’t have done this. (maybe didn’t act alone ? )
    We know that “Nutjobs” are prevalent in all belief systems and “all” political parties, I just think there’s still an untold story behind this that isn’t being revealed yet or, hasn’t been discovered yet.
    They just threw this bone out to see how the media and social media would react before feeding us more info.
    We need to give this more time. I’m sure there’s a lot more to this story yet to be revealed.

    • Brian May 17, 2018 at 12:54 pm

      Yeah, the conservative nutjob that is furious over government overreach like Waco, Ruby Ridge, and gun control decides to show his anger by shooting up a crowd of gun-loving, country-loving Americans using exactly the things that would cause the gun control crowd to froth at the mouth and give them the ammo they need to ratchet up their push for gun control. That makes complete and total sense (there’s thick sarcasm here for those that can’t sense it).

  • reddirt May 17, 2018 at 12:23 pm

    There is so much more to this story than we are being told. A city with almost more security camera’s than people and we have so little shown, both of casualties or the shooter(s) . The lack of disclosure is troubling and this coming 1/2 a year after the attack. Have a close look at the photo of the woman being carried at the tropicana above, I see no blood , nor even a drop on the ground, perhaps staged? I guess well never know.

  • SSTEED May 17, 2018 at 1:27 pm

    Fool me once, shame on you; fool me a few dozen times, then I’m an idiot. Don’t buy this garbage. It’s the same old Zionist trap of: We have the evidence, so we control the narrative; but sorry we cant let you see it to draw your own conclusions. Oh but here is a little morsel to keep you distracted and buy us time… This story has more holes in it than a screen door just like Sandy Hook, Parkland, and all the other “lone gunman” scenarios. Give up your guns and you’ll end up like Libya, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Ukraine, and Syria. That’s the goal but its up to us. I consider violence a last resort (that is their thing) but I will gladly wield my pen and sword (if need be) in the defense of freedom and liberty.

  • tazzman May 17, 2018 at 5:03 pm

    “A person they believed to be the gunman…”

    Well, that is conclusive.

  • PlanetU May 17, 2018 at 9:04 pm

    What about his brain? His brother donated his brain, so what are the results of that finding?

  • mctrialsguy May 18, 2018 at 11:40 am

    Another liberal shoots masses of people, this is getting to be a disturbing trend. Other places like schools protest guns when the school shooters were those that the student ignored or bullied by those in the schools. Guns are just one of the tools for those that have issues. Bombs, vehicles and other items also can and will be used by whackos

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