WSJ: Las Vegas Gunman Planned ‘Extensively’

Notes from article I haven't seen reported elsewhere:

• A law-enforcement official said Paddock had top-of-the-line weapons in his hotel room, which the official estimated were worth at least $20,000 in total.
• Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and other authorities spent the past two days retracing Paddock’s movements to discern his motives and preparations. They obtained security video showing him hauling luggage into the Mandalay Bay hotel and to his room on more than a half-dozen occasions, a law-enforcement official said. Investigators said they believe the bags contained firearms.
• They also said he visited several casinos in Las Vegas during the past few weeks. He placed bets that total in the tens of thousands of dollars, the official said. The precise amount isn’t yet known. But officials surmise it was more than $150,000 based on the number of currency transaction reports they have obtained detailing transactions that surpassed $10,000, which is legally required.
• Paddock was a consistent gambler but he wasn’t in debt and his account was up-to-date at Mandalay Bay before Sunday night’s shooting, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
• He had frequented Mandalay Bay over the past year, coming at least every other month to play video poker primarily, the person said. He was likely among the top 10% of gamblers at that casino during the past year, in terms of the amount wagered, the person said.
• Eric Paddock, the suspect’s brother, said “he gambled for 20-plus years successfully. It’s like a job for him. He did it mathematically, he did it because it was a way to have a fun life and he didn’t go poor doing it.”
• Jill Snyder, special agent in charge for the San Francisco division for Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is working the case, said a dozen of the rifles found in Paddock’s hotel room were outfitted with a “bump stock,” a device that allows the weapon to fire at a rapid rate. Ms. Snyder said the weapons were bought in Nevada, California, Texas and Utah.

thanks for those notes but would you mind copy/pasting the whole article? Interested to read it but that paywall though...

Has anyone identified this guy's casino host? He or she must have tons of background info on him. I'm also strangely more intereted in where he got the money to gamble hundreds of thousands of dollars every weekend given his work history than why he committed the massacre.

He was a wealthy accountant wasn't he? he owned airplanes and other expensive things.

i think his brother said that the shooter owned some properties with their mother too (who is 90 years old)

If he did, it would be deleted, for what I hope are obvious (intellectual property) reasons. We do the same for any copied article, paywall or not, we're aware of. Links and/or Cliffs are fine - complete cut-and-pastes are not.

If you need further clarification, feel free to post in the NVG moderation thread or send me a PM and I can explain, as I don't want to derail the thread.

Can't post the full article due to copyright but the remainder contains information that has been reported elsewhere.

Obviously this is way down the list of importance but you've got to wonder what Mandalay Bay will do with the 32nd floor. I mean who would want to stay on that floor on their vacation. They will probably make the shooter's room a storage room or something. And I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't sue the million dollar estate of the shooter for damage to the room and even the habitability of the whole floor which could be millions of dollars. Of course the victims are going to sue the estate also and they will most likely get that money before MB. Mass shooters are rarely if ever as rich as this guy.

Mandalay Bay is going to be sued, so is the venue, doesn't matter that the shooter was wealthy.

What's also sickening is the conspiracy talk starting....

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LVRJ: Las Vegas Strip shooter prescribed anti-anxiety drug in June

LVRJ: Amid the gunfire, acts of selfless heroism in Las Vegas

Hi Everyone:

I don't have much to add concerning this terrible tragedy that has impacted my home town. It's been very upsetting to me since Las Vegas and given so much to me and 2+2 for over 30 years. But I do have one comment which in a strange way is a good illustration of the scope of this awful event.

I had recently recorded on PBS the Vietnam War series and have been watching it in my spare time, and was doing this on the night of the shooting. However, I took a break to take a quick look at our website and saw that there had been a shooting at The Mandalay Bay, a hotel/casino I've been to many times. So I spent some time watching the news reports.

Anyway, after a couple of hours I went back to the Vietnam series and watched a scene where a battle had been filmed including all the gun firing that could be heard. But I couldn't keep my mind off the shooting so I quickly went back to the news reports and at this time they now had a cell phone video taken at the concert where you could hear all the shooting coming from Mandalay Bay, and there was very little difference between what I heard on the cell phone video and the sound of a battle in Vietnam all those years ago.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Mason,

I am the OP of the original thread on this topic. While there is a place for the political discussion pertaining to this tragic event, I never intended my thread to be such. Thank you for creating this new environment for a less heated conversation and one dedicated primarily to the facts and new information pertaining to this horrific tragedy.

As well, thank you for these forums. Although I'm a somewhat newly registered member and not many posts under my belt, I've been a reader for many years.

I'm not sure if it was explicitly confirmed by US media, but a Filipino news site has their local law enforcement confirming Paddock's money was transferred to his girlfriend's account.

NY Times just reported that she arrived back in the USA tonight.

I can confirm 100% it took over an hour. I live across the street from MB, heard every gunshot. Had police radio online live stream going while they were still searching for him.

Heard the swat team on the floor and it was absolutely over an hour from the first shots.

That being said, there was a significant amount of time from last shots to them breaching. Over 30 mins my guess.

Never heard that Valium can have such side effects. It's probably more interesting to learn why he got that prescribed in the first place.

Was Vegas massacre the killer's SECOND attempt? Gunman may have planned to target festival headlined by Chance the Rapper and Lorde but was unable to get rooms he requested that overlooked the concert

The Life is Beautiful Festival attracted 45,000 people per day to downtown Las Vegas from 22-24 September. A police source said that Paddock tried to hire a condo and a hotel room overlooking the open-air festival

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz4uWQCGxm6

I think he had a gambling problem for sure. Somewhere I read he spent 4 months at a hotel as an invited VIP. Texting his brother about the wins, anti-anxiety medication, etc. Who knows what kind of underground games he played in. Maybe he tried to "go big" and when that failed, he decided to go out the way he did.

This article by Scott Croteau says some people were trying to take police cars and police car shotguns. It reads:

"Officers were also reporting that people were trying to take patrol cars to flee the area. Another officer reported people trying to grab weapons from police cruisers.

"All units make sure your vehicles are locked. Citizens are trying to grab shotguns," a dispatcher warns officers. "

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.s...ne_as_pol.html

Some of those good ol' boys (and ladies) probably do know how to handle a shotgun.

I mean you have to be mentally ill to do something like this right ?
I hope the girlfriend interrogation info will go public

You don't have to be mentally sick to do things like this. You just have to be angry/careless enough.

Yeah, absolutely pulls the incident into focus. Even if the 59 victims are not people you know (which obviously applies to most people), each seems like someone you could know.

Two of my friends (who don't know each other) were in that crowd. One of them posted a "Safe" update on Facebook pretty quickly after the news broke. The other called one of my co-workers as it was taking place, mostly because she was scared out of her mind and needed to talk to someone. My co-worker said he could hear the patter of gunfire pretty loudly in the background of the call, revealing just how close she was to the situation.

I didn't get a chance to discuss this in the other thread before it went off the rails, but yeah I think 11 minutes is much more likely.

I can definitely believe the 72 minutes figure, but from what I understand it lasted not much longer than 10 mins then stopped completely. By 30+ minutes after police were probably more focussed with locking down the hotel to make sure he couldn't escape if still alive.

That "job" screams money-laundering of some kind to me (or he was a very successful real-estate investor that could subsidize his casino losses for 20 years). Wonder if we will ever know the whole story as it appears his family did not (or are not admitting).