Mass murder in Las Vegas 2017

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The perpetrator shot from the 32nd floor of the 43-story Mandalay Bay Hotel (2011)

The mass murder in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017 was a gun attack on visitors to a festival in Paradise , a town south of Las Vegas . As of 10:05 p.m. local time, 58 people were killed and approximately 869 others injured, the highest number of lone perpetrators in the history of the United States . The assassin then shot himself in his room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino hotel on the Las Vegas Strip , from where he fired the shots.

Act and investigation

crime scene

Mandalay Bay on the Las Vegas Strip , right behind the festival area with a rounded corner (2011)
Left the Mandalay Bay, in the middle the Las Vegas Strip, right the festival area (2017)

The deed happened on the final evening of the three-day Route 91 Harvest country music festival on 6  acres called Las Vegas Village , which has been hosting music since 2014 and which had previously served as a parking lot. The distance from the shooter at the Mandalay Bay Hotel to the area in front of the concert stage into which he shot was about 350 meters.

Perpetrator

The mass murder was committed by a 64-year-old lone perpetrator named Stephen Paddock. He had lived as a retired accountant in the Clark County town of Mesquite , Nevada , and previously had no police records. Paddock was considered a gambling addict , but wealthy man (according to his brother, he was said to have been a multimillionaire ) who owned several properties and sometimes resided in casino hotels for months .

Sequence of events

On September 25, 2017, a week before the attack, Stephen Paddock moved into a suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel. On September 29th, he rented an adjoining hotel room. The two rooms were at the end of the hotel's north wing and had a connecting door. Until the attack, Paddock had put 23 rifles and a pistol in 21 suitcases along with ammunition. The rifles included 14 AR-15 and 8 AR-10 rifles as well as a repeating rifle from a total of 10 different manufacturers. The 14 AR-15 rifles were originally semi-automatic rifles which, after installing a bump stick, enabled a much higher rate of fire and thus resembled fully automatic weapons.

On October 1st, the concert on the festival site began at 3 p.m. Around 22,000 visitors were on the festival site that day. At 9:40 p.m., the last artist, Jason Aldean, began performing .

Schematic representation of the trajectory

On the same day, Paddock installed a surveillance camera in the peephole of his hotel room door and two more on a serving trolley in the hotel hallway. He also locked a door between the hallway and the staircase by a angle screwed to the door leaf and the frame. At 9:36 p.m. he locked the door of his suite and at 9:46 p.m. the door of the adjoining room. Then he hit a window in each room with a hammer. At 10:05 p.m., Paddock began shooting people at the concert from a window. For about ten minutes, Paddock fired from the two windows into the crowd, mostly in volleys of 80 to 100 shots and with intermittent pauses. From 10:08 p.m. onwards, he fired eight individual shots at two large storage containers with kerosene , which were about 630 meters away, almost exactly in his direction of fire and belong to McCarran International Airport . Two shots struck one of the kerosene tanks, one of the projectiles penetrating the wall of the container but not causing an explosion. At 10:11 p.m., Paddock fired at police officers who were at the intersection between the hotel and the festival site before firing back into the festival site. A total of 14 rifles and 1057 rounds of ammunition were used in the assassination attempt. The bombardment ended at 10:15 p.m. 58 people were killed and more than 800 injured.

In between, Paddock fired several times through the closed door of his suite. A security guard at the hotel named Jesus Campos had discovered the iron corner on the locked door to the stairwell shortly after 10:00 p.m. at the end of a patrol and reported this observation to his operations center in the hotel at 10:04 p.m. This then notified the mechanic Stephen Schuck, who should take care of it. At 10:06 p.m. Campos heard what he thought were drilling noises. In the same minute, Paddock fired a volley of around 100 shots on the concert area. Paddock saw the guard using his surveillance cameras as he walked down the hotel corridor and shot him through the door of his suite. He injured his leg in the process. Campos sought protection in a niche and informed his operations center in the hotel about the shots from Paddock's suite. At 10:10 p.m., the mechanic Schuck arrived on the 32nd floor and walked towards Paddock's suite with his trolley. As he did so, he heard noises that made him think first of a jackhammer and then of machine gun fire. Campos called to Schuck to take cover. Paddock tried to shoot Schuck through his door but missed. Schuck immediately reported the bombardment with his radio and said the police should be notified.

When Campos reported shots to his chief of operations at 10:06 p.m., this was also learned by two police officers who were in the hotel's security office because of another incident. Together with two security guards from the hotel, they rushed to the elevators at 10:07 pm. However, it was not yet clear to them which floor the shooter was on and whether there were possibly several shooters, because contradicting information was circulating on the radio, according to which it could also be the 29th, 31st or 33rd floor. At 10:11 p.m. - shortly after Schuck reported the gunfire - two police officers and two armed security guards of the hotel arrived on the 31st floor and went to the north wing. At 10:12 p.m. they reported on the police radio and on the hotel radio that they had heard machine gun fire on the floor above them. At the same minute, two other armed security guards arrived at the hotel on the 32nd floor. At that time, Schuck ran towards the middle of the building during a fire break and met the security guards there. They held out together until a few minutes later the shooting stopped. At 10:17 p.m., two police officers reached the 32nd floor via an elevator and began to search another wing of the building. Schuck saw them and informed them of the gunner's position in the north wing. When the shooting ended, Campos also ran to the center of the building. He met four police officers there and informed them which suite the shooter was in. The police decided to evacuate the first floor before storming the suite. More than an hour after the last gunshots, a SWAT commando blew up the door to Paddock's suite at 11:20 p.m. and found the perpetrator dead. He shot himself with his pistol.

The chronological reconstruction of the crime resulted in errors and mix-ups. The Las Vegas police had to revise their chronology of events several times, which caused confusion and doubts about the investigative work of the police. On October 3, the police had assumed that the perpetrator had shot between 10:08 and 10:19 p.m., based on the receipt of the first alarm report by the police at 10:08 p.m. This information was corrected on October 4th: Shots between 10:05 p.m. and 10:15 p.m. Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said on October 9th the shooting of security guard Campos took place at 9:59 p.m. On October 13th, he corrected the information to “about 10:05 pm”, although it was still unclear whether the shots at Campos occurred before or after the start of the shots on the concert area. The indication "9:59 pm" is said to come from a handwritten report of the hotel, which was made afterwards, and in fact refer to the time when Campos became aware of the locking of the door to the stairwell, but the angle iron on the the other side of the door. It is unclear when the reports about the shots at Campos and Schuck arrived at the police operations center and how they were processed there. In the final report of the LVMPD there is no information on this, although the shots at Campos and Schuck are important for the reconstruction of the events. On the first page of the executive summary in the final police report, Campos is named 12 times and Schuck 6 times.

Victim

As a result of the attack, 58 people between the ages of 20 and 67 were killed, not counting the perpetrator. After the attack, 20 bodies were lying in the area in front of the concert stage. 4 bodies were found next to the medical care tent and 7 bodies in the immediate vicinity of the festival site. The other 27 were found dead in hospitals in the area. Most of the 58 victims died immediately or during the night, the last fatality was added on October 3rd. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) was only able to provide approximate information on the number of people injured : About 869 people were injured, about 413 of them by projectiles or fragments. The LVMPD also counts all around 22,000 visitors to the concert among the victims. It can be assumed that many concert-goers as well as passers-by on the Las Vegas Strip and affected relatives were significantly traumatized .

Subject search

The police and the FBI assumed that Paddock was a single perpetrator without an extremist background. According to the FBI, the crime was not related to a terrorist organization . The search of the paddock apartment in Mesquite did not reveal any possible motive, but 19 other weapons, several thousand rounds of ammunition and material for the construction of explosives were found. Investigators also found around 23 kg of explosives and another 1,600 rounds of ammunition in his car in the hotel's parking garage.

Paddock had already rented a room in Chicago with a view of the Lollapalooza Festival in August 2017 and an apartment in Las Vegas with a view of the Life-is-Beautiful music festival in September , which points to earlier planned actions. In 2011, Paddock had brought a civil case against the casino hotel The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas because he had slipped in the casino there. As part of the investigation and the search for a motive for the massacre in Las Vegas, court documents about this process were handed over to the FBI. According to the files, Paddock described himself as the "greatest video poker player in the world". He “played 14 hours a day, 365 days a year, played poker all night and slept during the day”. Paddock also said he took Valium for anxiety.

Reactions

Comments

Political reactions followed through a variety of channels in the hours following the crime. So spoke President Donald Trump on Twitter his condolences and sympathy, as it did the former president Barack Obama . Brian Sandoval , the governor of Nevada , spoke of a "tragic and terrible act of violence". From Germany, government spokesman Steffen Seibert expressed his disbelief; The Federal President and the Chancellor expressed their condolences to the US President. Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said his thoughts were with the people and loved ones in Las Vegas.

The late-night talk show hosts , who were influential in the USA , not only addressed the horror of the crime, but also made political statements. Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah , among others, complained about the same routine of expressions of condolences and calls to prayer after shootings and called for improvements in firearms control. Special attention was very emotional opening monologue from Jimmy Kimmel , who in the social media was shared by the millions. In it he also went into the lack of legislation and accused MPs and the gun lobby to block relevant laws.

The Islamic terrorist organization “ Islamic State ” (IS) claimed the crime via the Amaq propaganda channel and stated that the perpetrator had converted to Islam several months ago , but without providing any evidence of a connection or background information about the perpetrator. The authorities questioned this information. They did not classify the massacre as a terrorist attack and saw no reference to IS or other extremists. The suicide paddock also contradicts the ideology of the Islamist terrorist organization and the typical behavior of IS attackers who are either torn apart when detonating explosives or are shot by security forces. Terrorism experts suspected that the confession was merely the wish of the terrorist organization, which is steadily losing influence in Syria and Iraq , to "keep talking" if possible.

The American rapper Eminem addresses the mass murder in the music video for his song "Darkness" and criticizes the gun laws in the USA.

Gun laws

After the attack, the share prices of weapons manufacturers rose on the stock exchange . Investors presumably assumed that more weapons would be bought in response to the crime. The 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution forbids the US federal government from restricting the right to possess and carry weapons. Meanwhile, Democratic politicians have again called for stricter gun laws . Several democratic senators called for “deeper thinking” and for a “debate on how to stop gun violence”.

Bump stocks , with which the rate of fire of semi-automatic weapons can be increased, were discussed . In contrast to automatic weapons or machine guns, they were freely available in the USA and also inexpensive. There was strong demand for them after the attack because a legal ban no longer seemed ruled out in the future. The Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein , who had long campaigned for stricter gun laws, again presented a bill that bans attachments with which legal weapons can be upgraded easily and cheaply to banned automatic weapons. The draft was written after the rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012 and was rejected by the US Senate with a large majority. Even the National Rifle Association , which has always defended the right of US citizens to own guns, spoke out in favor of stricter regulation of bump stock sales on October 5, 2017.

After the school massacre in Parkland on February 14, 2018, which left 17 people dead, the protest against bump stocks flared up again. US President Trump announced on February 20, 2018 that the Justice Department would now, on his instructions, ensure a ban on bump stocks. The ban came into force on December 18, 2018. In the discussion of this change in the law, reference was made regularly to the mass murders in Las Vegas and Parkland.

Civil actions for damages

The MGM Group was hit with around 2500 civil claims for damages. In July 2018 MGM took preventive action against more than 1,000 victims and in the summer of 2018 a total of more than 1,900 victims in order to avoid claims for damages and the threatening flood of lawsuits. The hotel chain claimed it was not responsible because the security company it hired for the concert was licensed by the US Homeland Security and had "anti-terrorist technology"; in addition, the festival site had been rated as sufficiently safe in advance by the responsible state authority. When asked about the responsibility of the hotel, the plaintiffs mainly referred to the fact that the perpetrator was able to bring a huge arsenal of weapons and ammunition into his suite unnoticed over several days.

The action taken by the hotel chain against the suing victims triggered widespread indignation and caused MGM considerable damage to its reputation, which also had a damaging effect on its business. The hotel group therefore decided to change its strategy. In November 2018, MGM announced that preliminary talks had been held with the aim of reaching an out-of-court settlement. In May 2019, MGM said the compensation payments could reach $ 800 million. Of this, $ 751 million is covered by insurance. An agreement was reached on October 3, 2019. Compensation payments will be a minimum of $ 735 million and up to $ 800 million, depending on how many victims will make claims. MGM pointed out that the payments should not be understood as an admission that the hotel was responsible for the victims' damage.

Web links

Commons : Las Vegas Mass Murder 2017  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c investigation report of the LVMPD , August 3, 2018 (PDF, English), pp. 10-19.
  2. ↑ Las Vegas shooting now tops list of worst mass shootings in US history tennessean.com, October 2, 2017.
  3. ↑ Police identify perpetrators: Fired at 30,000 concert-goers orf.at, October 2, 2017.
  4. ↑ Festival attacked by Las Vegas shooter had been success story in creating outdoor music destination Los Angeles Times, October 3, 2017.
  5. ↑ In the area in front of the concert stage there were those 20 fatalities who had not been removed, cf. Investigation report of the LVMPD, August 3, 2018, p. 77 f.
  6. ↑ Distance of the shooter to the area with the fatalities: on average about 335 meters, measured with Google Maps . The distance was about 15 meters longer due to the higher position of the shooter on the 32nd floor.
  7. ↑ Las Vegas gunman suspect is Stephen Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nevada: NBC News , CNBC. 2nd October 2017. 
  8. ↑ What we know about Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock . News.com.au. Retrieved October 2, 2017.
  9. ↑ a b Stephen Paddock, Las Vegas Suspect, Was a Gambler Who Drew Little Attention. on nytimes.com, accessed October 3, 2017.
  10. ↑ Investigation report of the LVMPD, August 3, 2018 (PDF, English), p. 23 and p. 81–94 (with pictures).
  11. ↑ See floor plan of the suite in an article in the Los Angeles Times of October 4, 2017. The smaller of the two rooms is in the lower right corner of this sketch and is not shown in full. A similar drawing can be found in the LVMPD's investigation report, August 3, 2018, p. 81.
  12. ^ How the Las Vegas Gunman Planned a Massacre. In: New York Times. March 27, 2018, accessed April 5, 2018 (English, video).
  13. ↑ LVMPD investigation report, August 3, 2018 (PDF, English), pp. 96-104.
  14. ↑ a b The perpetrator used bump sticks to increase the rate of fire. Article on theguardian.com ; accessed on October 4, 2017.
  15. ↑ Investigation report of the LVMPD, August 3, 2018 (PDF, English), p. 24.
  16. ↑ a b Paddock booked rooms at other music festivals. Zeit Online, October 5, 2017, accessed October 6, 2017 .
  17. ↑ Investigation report of the LVMPD, August 3, 2018 (PDF, English), see pictures on p. 39, 45.
  18. ↑ Investigation report of the LVMPD, August 3, 2018 (PDF, English), p. 33.
  19. ↑ a b c LVMPD investigation report, August 3, 2018 (PDF, English), p. 34.
  20. ↑ The two kerosene tanks on Google Maps (right in the picture). Distance measurement with Google Maps in a larger area.
  21. ↑ Las Vegas Shooter Stephen Paddock Fired at Airport Fuel Tanks During Attack October 6, 2017.
  22. ↑ Video documentation of the New York Times on the course of the crime (11:00 min.), Here 6:22 am to 7:00 am.
  23. ↑ investigation report of the LVMPD, August 3, 2018 (PDF), S. 68th
  24. ↑ Investigation report of the LVMPD, August 3, 2018 (PDF, English), p. 106 f.
  25. ↑ a b c d LVMPD investigation report, August 3, 2018 (PDF, English), p. 36.
  26. ↑ Investigation report of the LVMPD, August 3, 2018 (PDF, English), p. 33 f.
  27. ↑ Investigation report of the LVMPD, August 3, 2018 (PDF, English), p. 35 f.
  28. ↑ Investigation report of the LVMPD, August 3, 2018 (PDF, English), pp. 41, 61.
  29. ↑ Video documentation of the New York Times on the course of the crime (11:00 min.), Here 8:00 to 8:12.
  30. ↑ investigation report of the LVMPD, August 3, 2018 (PDF), S. 58th
  31. ↑ a b LVMPD investigation report, August 3, 2018 (PDF, English), p. 37.
  32. ↑ Investigation report of the LVMPD, August 3, 2018 (PDF, English), pp. 44, 58.
  33. ↑ investigation report of the LVMPD, August 3, 2018 (PDF), S. 59th
  34. ↑ investigation report of the LVMPD, August 3, 2018 (PDF), p. 44
  35. ↑ Investigation report of the LVMPD, August 3, 2018 (PDF, English), p. 107.
  36. ↑ Transcript of the LVMPD press conference on October 3, 2017 reddit.com, with a link to the official video.
  37. ↑ Transcript of the LVMPD press conference on October 4, 2017 reddit.com, with a link to the official video.
  38. ↑ Transcript of the LVMPD press conference on October 9, 2017 reddit.com, with a link to the official video.
  39. ^ Another Shift in Las Vegas Timeline Caps Days of Confusion nytimes.com, October 13, 2007.
  40. ↑ investigation report of the LVMPD, August 3, 2018 (PDF), p. 7
  41. ↑ Information on the 58 fatalities in alphabetical order, with photographs: Here are all the victims of the Las Vegas shooting eu.usatoday.com, October 8, 2017.
  42. ↑ Information on the 58 fatalities: Article on tasteofcountry.com, February 7, 2018, see photo series under These Are the Faces and Stories of the Las Vegas Victims .
  43. ↑ investigation report of the LVMPD , August 3, 2018 (PDF), pp 77-80.
  44. ↑ LVMPD investigation report, August 3, 2018 (PDF, English), p. 19.
  45. ↑ investigation report of the LVMPD , August 3, 2018 (PDF), p. 18
  46. ↑ Las Vegas and the Mass Murder. at spiegel.de, accessed on October 2, 2017.
  47. ↑ a b The dubious confession of IS. at spiegel.de, accessed on October 2, 2017.
  48. ↑ Paddock was a compulsive gamer and apparently took Valium , on spiegel.de, accessed on October 9, 2017.
  49. ^ Lizzie Dearden: Statement from Governor Brian Sandoval on shooting in Las Vegas. (No longer available online.) In: Nevada . October 2, 2017, archived from the original on October 2, 2017 ; accessed on October 2, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / gov.nv.gov
  50. Jump up ↑ Shots in Las Vegas - The Reactions. on sueddeutsche.de
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  53. ^ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung GmbH: Assassination attempt in Las Vegas: "No citizen needs a machine gun". October 3, 2017, accessed October 6, 2017 .
  54. ↑ Oliver McAteer: Isis claims Las Vegas shooting and says attacker was converted months ago. In: Metro . October 2, 2017. Retrieved October 2, 2017 .
  55. ↑ ISIS called for a lone wolf attack on the Las Vegas Strip in a chilling 'call to arms' video released in May. In: Daily Mail . October 2, 2017. Retrieved October 2, 2017 .
  56. ↑ Las Vegas in the live ticker: More than 50 dead after shots from the hotel .
  57. ↑ FBI sees no terror connection in shots in Las Vegas , on welt.de, accessed on October 2, 2017.
  58. ↑ Lizzie Dearden: Las Vegas shooting: Isis claims responsibility for deadliest gun massacre in US history. In: The Independent . October 2, 2017. Retrieved October 2, 2017 .
  59. ↑ ISIS claim of link to Las Vegas shooter is a sign terror group is 'desperate' to remain relevant, experts say. cnbc.com, accessed October 3, 2017.
  60. ↑ Music for Murder: Controversy over Eminem's new album . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed January 20, 2020]).
  61. ↑ Attack in Las Vegas: US arms dealers' stocks rise. In: Spiegel Online . October 2, 2017. Retrieved October 2, 2017 .
  62. ↑ n-tv editors: Democrats are calling for stricter gun laws. ntv.de, October 2, 2017, accessed October 2, 2017 .
  63. ↑ a b Dianne Feinstein introduces Senate gun control bill to ban bump stocks - Article in theguardian.co.uk ; accessed on October 5, 2017
  64. ↑ The device used by the Las Vegas killer to massacre as many people as possible is now selling out . In: The Independent . October 4, 2017 ( independent.co.uk [accessed October 5, 2017]).
  65. ↑ NRA Supports New Rules on 'Bump Stock' Devices nytimes.com, October 5, 2017.
  66. ↑ "Continuous fire" devices: Trump wants to have "Bump Stocks" banned n-tv.de, February 20, 2018.
  67. ↑ Trump Administration imposes Ban on Bump Stocks nytimes.com, December 18, 2018th
  68. ↑ a b Las Vegas: MGM is suing victims of the 2017 rampage. Retrieved January 28, 2019 .
  69. ↑ a b c MGM might pay $ 800 million in Las Vegas shooting settlement latimes.com, May 17, 2019.
  70. ↑ a b MGM Resorts And Las Vegas Shooting Survivors Move Toward Mediation forbes.com, November 2, 2018.
  71. ↑ MGM and Las Vegas shooting victims reach a settlement of up to $ 800 million edition.cnn.com, October 3, 2019.

Coordinates: 36 ° 5 ′ 43 "  N , 115 ° 10 ′ 18.3"  W.