Shooting in Las Vegas, US kills at least 50, injures over 400
A lone gunman released a rapid-fire barrage of bullets from a 32nd-floor Las Vegas hotel room late Sunday, killing at least 50 people and injuring more than 400 others at an outdoor country music festival, police said.
It was the worst mass shooting in modern American history.
The shooter, who was identified by law enforcement officials as Stephen Craig Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nevada, fired shot after shot from the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino down on the crowd of about 22,000, sending terrified concertgoers running for their lives.
“We heard what sounded like firecrackers going off. Then all of a sudden we heard what sounded like a machine gun. People started screaming that they were hit,” witness Meghan Kearney told MSNBC. “When we started running out, there were probably a couple hundred [people] on the ground.”
She added: “People kept dropping and dropping … People were getting shot one foot away from us. People were trying to save their friends. There were gunshots everywhere. Helping them would’ve meant that we got shot, too.”
Police responded to reports of the shooting just after 10 p.m. (1 a.m. ET). Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters Monday morning that authorities believe Paddock killed himself before police entered his room.
Earlier, officials had said police fatally shot Paddock.
The suspect is believed to have checked into the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on Sept. 28, Lombardo said, and had an “excess of ten rifles” in his hotel room.
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