LAS VEGAS -- Authorities in Las Vegas said Tuesday that the gunman who killed least 59 people at a country music festival "extensively" planned the massacre, placing cameras in his room and the nearby hallway so he could see when police officers were closing in on him.
"It was preplanned, extensively, and I'm pretty sure that he evaluated everything that he did in his actions, which is troublesome," Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said Tuesday at a news briefing.
Lombardo said one of the cameras was hidden in a food service cart in the hallway outside the suite. Law enforcement officials said the purpose of that camera was apparently to give the gunman a video feed that would warn him when police were closing in.
Clark County Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said another camera was found in the peephole of the gunman's high-rise hotel room.
Lombardo also said the department has opened an investigation into the unauthorized release of images that show the crime scene, including the bullet-riddled door of the suite the gunman, Stephen Paddock, was using. Police said Paddock shot at hotel security officers before taking his own life.
In photographs, obtained Tuesday by the German newsmagazine Bild, a portion of Paddock's two-room suite is visible. A gun with a scope and a stand can be seen in the room, just behind yellow crime-scene tape crisscrossing the door.
Lombardo declined to confirm whether the images were legitimate, but he said the department is trying to determine how the images were made public.
"I can tell you I'm very troubled by it," Lombardo said. "We have an internal investigation going as we speak as to how those photographs were obtained."
Investigators have examined an array of clues in the wake of the deadliest U.S. shooting in the past five years, trying to determine the chain of events that caused the 64-year-old to gun down concertgoers from his hotel suite overlooking the Las Vegas Strip.
The investigation stretched from Paddock's ranch-style home near the Arizona border to the 32nd-floor hotel suite in Las Vegas from which he scanned the crowds at the country music festival below. He opened fire late Sunday, killing at least 59 people and injuring hundreds more in the rain of bullets. Some people were trampled in the ensuing panicked rush for cover.
Lombardo has warned that the number of dead in Las Vegas could rise. Hospitals across the region continued to treat the injured patients, many of whom were in critical condition. Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center said that as of Tuesday morning, it had 68 patients from the shooting, 33 of whom were in critical condition.
THE ARSENAL
Once again, some Democrats in Washington raised the call for gun control and gun safety legislation, but the White House and many Republicans said it was a time to mourn rather than delve into political battles.
While the nation learned more about the lives cut short and the heroic actions of people on the ground, few answers were available as to what motivated the gunman.
Lombardo said he was "absolutely" confident that authorities will figure it out.
Police said Paddock arrived Thursday, three days before the shooting, at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the southern end of the Las Vegas Strip. He ultimately took more than 10 suitcases into his suite, officials said.
He aroused no suspicion from the hotel staff even as he secreted in 23 guns.
Officials found another 19 guns, as well as thousands of rounds of ammunition and the chemical tannerite, an explosive, at Paddock's home in Mesquite, Nev. They also found ammonium nitrate, a chemical that can be used in bombmaking, in the gunman's vehicle, Lombardo said.
His arsenal included AR-15-type rifles, as well as an AK-47-type weapon, officials said. Some of the weapons were mounted on bipods. At least one had a scope. The weapons ranged from .223-caliber to .308-caliber rifles.
The gunman also had 12 "bump stock" devices to turn at least one of his rifles into something akin to an automatic weapon, law enforcement officials said.
Bump-fire stocks, first made by the company Slide Fire, are legal modifications to the lower receiver of rifles that simulate automatic fire. The receiver is the framework containing the firing mechanism. The modified stock harnesses the energy from recoil, forcing the firing mechanism to move faster than originally designed, according to The Trace, a nonprofit website that examines gun violence in the United States. Numerous videos online, including from Slide Fire, demonstrate the mechanics.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives decided in 2010 that bump stocks do not violate federal firearms laws, but the devices nonetheless have drawn scrutiny from authorities in recent years.
The gunman had remote video cameras linked to a computer tablet to watch for police storming his hotel room, constituting a security perimeter behind him while he fired into the crowd below.
"I anticipate he was looking for anybody coming to take him into custody," Lombardo said.
When police breached his hotel room door and stormed inside, they found him dead, with empty shell casings on the carpet around him. He had apparently used a silver, black-handled revolver to commit suicide.
The gunman had purchased weapons legally over a period of years, from stores near his several homes and from major retailers, like Cabela's, according to law enforcement officials.
In a statement, Guns & Guitars, a store in Mesquite, said Paddock purchased some of his weapons there, but employees followed all procedures required by law and Paddock "never gave any indication or reason to believe he was unstable or unfit at any time." Lombardo said Paddock also seemed to have purchased guns in Arizona.
Authorities said a search of law enforcement databases indicated that Paddock had no known run-ins with police before Sunday's shooting. He was the son of a bank robber who was once on the FBI's most-wanted list, but investigators turned up no clear links to any criminal enterprises or international terrorist groups -- despite repeated claims by the Islamic State militant group that Paddock carried out the carnage in its name.
Police said they believe Paddock was a "lone wolf" attacker. They said they were interested in speaking more with 62-year-old Marilou Danley, Paddock's girlfriend.
A law enforcement official said Danley arrived late Tuesday at Los Angeles International Airport and was met by FBI agents. The official wasn't authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Danley lived with Paddock in Mesquite, a little more than an hour outside of Las Vegas on the Arizona border.
Lombardo said that on Monday afternoon, Danley was located in Tokyo, and earlier Tuesday, she was in the Philippines.
"We still consider her a person of interest," Lombardo said Monday.
People close to the investigation said that in the weeks before Sunday's attack, Paddock transferred a large amount of money -- something close to $100,000 -- to someone in the Philippines.
Investigators are still trying to trace that money and also looking into a least a dozen financial reports over the past several weeks that said Paddock gambled more than $10,000 per day, according to a U.S. official briefed by law enforcement but not authorized to speak publicly because of the continuing investigation.
Eric Paddock, Stephen Paddock's brother, said he was stunned to learn that his brother could be responsible for such violence.
Stephen Paddock had no history of mental illness nor did he have problems with drugs or alcohol, Eric Paddock said, noting that his brother was a high-stakes gambler, sometimes wagering hundreds of dollars on a single hand of video poker.
When he spoke to the FBI, Eric Paddock said he showed agents three years of text messages from his brother, including one that mentioned winning $250,000 at a casino. A federal law enforcement official said investigators had reviewed reports suggesting that Stephen Paddock engaged in high-dollar gambling, and they were trying to determine whether he faced financial strains.
Stephen Paddock, who had a business degree from Cal State Northridge, worked as a mail carrier and an IRS agent and held down a job in an auditing division of the Defense Department, according to the government. He later worked for a defense contractor.
Stephen Paddock did show a confrontational side at times, his brother said. He hated cigarette smoke so much that he carried around a cigar and blew smoke in people's faces when they lit up around him, his brother said.
SHOOTING VICTIMS
The shooting Sunday targeted the Route 91 Harvest festival, a three-day country music concert with grounds across the street from the Mandalay Bay Resort.
When the gunfire began Sunday at 10:08 p.m., about 22,000 people were at the venue, police said. Country music star Jason Aldean was playing what was expected to be one of the last sets of the night as Stephen Paddock opened fire. He rained bullets from a window on the casino's golden facade, which he had smashed out with some type of hammer.
The dead included a behavioral therapist who was soon to be married, a nursing assistant from Southern California, a commercial fisherman and an off-duty Las Vegas city police officer.
Two other officers who were on duty were injured, police said. One was in stable condition after surgery, and the other's injuries were considered minor.
An off-duty officer with the Bakersfield Police Department in Southern California also suffered injuries that were not considered life-threatening, according to a statement from the department.
Some investigators turned their focus Tuesday from the shooter's perch to the festival grounds where his victims fell. A dozen investigators documented evidence at the site.
Authorities released police body camera video that showed the chaos of the attack as officers tried to figure out the location of the shooter and shuttle people to safety. Amid sirens and volleys of gunfire, people yelled "they're shooting right at us" while officers shouted "go that way!"
McMahill said the shooting spanned between nine and 11 minutes.
John Soqui said drove seven hours from Arizona to see his 29-year-old niece, who was shot in the head. Jovanna Martinez-Calzadillas, from suburban Phoenix, was attending the concert with her husband, a military police officer, Soqui said. Her husband, who was not injured, carried Martinez-Calzadillas away from the concert after she was shot, relatives said.
"There is just so much hate in this world, and she is my little niece, and I just want to get the guy who shot her," said Soqui, 51.
Soqui then remembered that Stephen Paddock had apparently taken his own life before police stormed his hotel room.
"I want to die, kill myself, just so I can get him," Soqui added. "So many people have been affected by this, and it's just killing me that there are people like that out there."
President Donald Trump planned to visit Las Vegas today.
Information for this article was contributed by Tim Craig, Mark Berman, Devlin Barrett, Matt Zapotosky, Lynh Bui, Felicia Mello, Heather Long, Barbara Liston, Justin Glawe, Brian Murphy, Wesley Lowery, Julie Tate and Alex Horton of The Washington Post; by Ken Ritter, Mike Balsamo, Brian Skoloff, Regina Garcia Cano, Sally Ho, Brian Melley, Sadie Gurman and Tami Abdollah of The Associated Press; and by Laura Nelson, Joseph Tanfani, Richard Winton and Kate Mather of the Los Angeles Times.
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