Investigators have still not discovered what motivated Stephen Paddock to embark on the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history but determined that he researched SWAT tactics ahead of the massacre and investigated other possible targets, including the famed California beach in Santa Monica, officials said Friday.
They also determined that Paddock acted alone when he opened fire from his high-rise hotel suite, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo told reporters.
Lombardo made public a preliminary report into the shooting and said he does not expect charges to be filed against Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, who had been previously called a person of interest in the case. Investigators also found that Paddock had possessed child pornography, Lombardo said.
Paddock’s online searches before the shooting included research into SWAT tactics and for other potential public venue targets – and he took photographs of some potential sites, the sheriff said. The searches also included the number of attendees at other concerts in Las Vegas and how many people go to Santa Monica’s beach.
The sheriff and the FBI have said they found no link to international terrorism. They said they believe Paddock meticulously prepared and concealed his plan to fire assault-style weapons from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel into a crowd of 22,000 people attending the Route 91 Harvest Festival music below.
Paddock fired more than 1,100 bullets, mostly from two windows in the high-rise hotel, Lombardo has said. That includes about 200 shots fired through Paddock’s hotel room door into a hallway where an unarmed hotel security guard was wounded in the leg and a maintenance engineer took cover to avoid being hit.
Several bullets hit aviation fuel storage tanks at nearby McCarran International Airport that did not explode. Authorities reported finding about 4,000 unused bullets in Paddock’s two-room suite, including incendiary rounds that Lombardo said were not used.
Investigators found 23 guns in the rooms, including 12 rifles that a federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms official said were fitted with “bump stock” devices that allowed rapid-fire shooting similar to fully automatic operation.