On Sunday, Oct 1, 2017, a mass shooting broke out after 10 p.m. at the Harvest Country Music Festival killing over 50 concertgoers and injuring 515 people. The gunfire came from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. Stephen Paddock, age 64, was identified as shooter. He is from Mesquite Nevada, and checked into the hotel Thursday.
He unleashed a hail of bullets out of the hotel window and into the crowd of 22,000 people. Before midnight, SWAT teams found the gunman dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. In addition, they found at least 20 rifles in the room.
“The shooting was going on for at least 10 minutes,” according to Jake Owens, a country singer who was on stage with Jason Alden.
People were trying to find shelter in the open field among chaos and screaming. So far, police are unsure of the motive of Paddock’s mass shooting. Moreover, his brother Eric was shocked and did not believe that his brother could do such a thing. He also told the Las Vegas Police that his brother only came down to the strip to play poker and the slots. Gambling was Paddock’s hobby.
Paddock met his girlfriend Marilou Danley worked at the casino and was his regular waitress. He wired money to her while, she was in the Philippines, so she could buy a home for her family and have money to start over. However, neither had agreed that the relationship was over. His girlfriend informed the police that she left the states before the shooting and spent most of her time out of the country.
The shooter’s timeline was all over the place, but what stood out was that he booked a hotel in Vegas two months before the massacre took place. He was not only looking over the musical festival across from the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, he attended other musical festivals in Las Vegas that weekend.
However, Las Vegas was not the only place he was planning a massacre; he booked rooms at The Blackstone Hotel during the month of August, in Chicago. The Lollapalooza music festival every year is always packed with Chicagoans. If his plans would have continued, Las Vegas and Chicago might have been a double city mass murder.
The many lives Paddock has taken away from beloved family members are gone forever. However, this massive shooting will go down in history. Five hundred, out of the 22,000 people, who attended the event. were injured but live onward.
Will Congress look over gun laws to find a way to make every citizen feel safe?
Written by Kwjuana Owens
Edited by Jeanette Smith
Sources:
New York Times: Mandalay Bay Vegas Shooting
The Mercury News: At Least 50 Dead and 200 Injured at Shooting On Las Vegas Strip Police says
Las Vegas Review-Journal: Shooters Brother It’s Like an Asteroid Fell on Top of Our Family
The New York Times: Police Speaks with Gunman’s Girlfriend
Featured and Top Image Courtesy of Chris McCorkle’s Flickr Page – Creative Common License