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Image taken from police body cam video release showing police officer directing AP
Stephen Paddock

Police say they can't find a motive or evidence of a second shooter for Las Vegas massacre

Fifty-eight people died in the mass shooting.

OVER 10 months after the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, police have said they still can not find a motive as to why Stephen Paddock murdered 58 people.

Authorities said after hundreds of interviews and thousands of hours of investigative work, they are confident there is no evidence of a conspiracy or a second gunman.

Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said Stephen Paddock was “an unremarkable man” who showed signs of a troubled mind leading up to the October shooting on the Las Vegas Strip, but authorities don’t have any clear answers.

Lombardo said that with the closure of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s 10-month investigation, no one else will be charged in connection with the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.

Paddock, who fired across Las Vegas Boulevard from a hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel into a concert crowd of 22,000 people, was the only gunman, Lombardo said.

Earlier this year, federal prosecutors brought criminal charges against a man who they say sold armour-piercing bullets.

Authorities have said the man, Douglas Haig, sold Paddock 720 rounds of tracer bullets. He has pleaded not guilty.

Police have released 13 batches of investigative documents, 911 audio, police reports, witness statements and video over the last three months.

They have illustrated chaos, heartbreak and heroism from police, first-responders, concert-goers and more.

Body camera recordings made public earlier showed officers using explosives to blast through the door of a 32nd floor hotel suite to find Paddock dead on the floor from a self-inflicted gunshot. Assault-style weapons fitted with rapid-fire “bump stock” devices were strewn about the suite.

Officials have said the attack had no link to international terrorism, but hotel owner MGM Resorts International last month invoked a provision of a federal law enacted after the September 11 terror attacks.

The company wants federal courts to qualify the shooting as an act of terrorism and to declare the company has no liability to survivors or families of slain victims.

Author
Associated Foreign Press
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