New questions about Las Vegas shooting as police reveal a dramatic change in timeline

The new information contradicts an earlier narrative that police believed a hotel security guard prompted Stephen Paddock to stop shooting, and raises new questions about why police waited before entering the hotel room

Investigators believe that Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock intentionally obscured his motivations for last week’s mass killing as he was painstakingly plotting the deadliest shooting in U.S. history.

“This individual purposely hid his actions leading up to the event,” Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said in a press conference on Monday.

As CrimeOnline previously reported, police also revealed a dramatic change to their earlier timeline of Sunday’s massacre: A security guard at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino previously believed to have been shot after Paddock had opened fire on a crowd of thousands at the Route 91 Harvest Festival was actually shot and injured six minutes before the gunman began shooting out the window. And it was 21 minutes after that guard was shot before two police officers arrived to the floor just below where Paddock was shooting.

Authorities have not revealed why the two officers arrived to the 31st floor instead of the 32nd, and it is unclear if the injured officer contacted police or hotel security after he was shot. The new information contradicts an earlier narrative that police believed the security guard prompted Paddock to stop shooting.

The Los Angeles Times published an updated timeline of Sunday night’s massacre. According to the update, the security guard was shot at 9:59 p.m. and Paddock began shooting out the window at 10:05 p.m. Two officers arrived to the 31st floor of the hotel at 1o:12 p.m. and reported that gunfire was coming from the floor above them. Five minutes later they arrived to the 32nd floor, where the security guard told them he had been shot. By that time Paddock had stopped firing at the crowd, and is believed to have shot and killed himself. Officers found his body when they entered the room at 11:20 p.m.

It is unclear why the officers did not enter the hotel room earlier, though the timeline indicates that more responders were arriving to the 32nd floor before they entered Paddock’s room.  As the Los Angeles Times noted, authorities had earlier indicated that they did not rush to breach the hotel room because they believed the security guard’s arrival had ended the shooting spree.

The security guard reportedly went to the 32nd floor on the night of the shooting after a hotel room door left open triggered an alarm. It was not Paddock’s hotel room, and Lombardo told reporters on Monday that police are now not sure why Paddock stopped shooting.

NBC News reports that police have followed over 1,000 leads and are still mystified by theshooter’s intentions. They have found no evidence that Paddock was connected to any particular ideology that may have prompted the mass shooting.

“Every piece of information we get is one more piece of the puzzle,” Lombardo said on Monday.

 

[Feature photo: U.S. Government]