Las Vegas massacre: 10 months after carnage, police closes investigation, but motive is still a mystery
Las Vegas police officials on Friday closed their investigation into the last year's massacre, which claimed 58 lives. Reports state that officials shut the case without finding a motive behind America's deadliest mass shooting in modern history. The massacre unfolded last year on the night of October 1 as a gunman, identified as Stephen Craig Paddock, opened fire on a crowd of concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada. The tragedy claimed 58 victims and an additional 851 were injured.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, after nearly 10 months of research and questioning, announced on Friday that they are closing their books on the case. The officials added that they found no second gunman or evidence of conspiracy associated with the 2017 shooting.
The probe into the case failed to determine the motive behind line-wolf Paddock's killing spree from a hotel room in Mandalay Bay Resort as he opened fire on a concert crowd of 22,000 people. The authorities on Friday concluded that no one else will be charged in association with the carnage.
Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, while talking about Paddock, said that he was "an unremarkable man" who showed signs of a troubled mind, which led to the deadly assault in October last year. Federal prosecutors, earlier this year, had brought criminal charges against Douglas Haig, who they claimed sold 720 rounds of armor-piercing bullets to Paddock. Haig has pleaded not guilty, the Daily Mail reported.
Officials have released 13 batches of investigative documents, 911 audio, police reports, witness statements and a video over the last three months.
The 911 tapes released by the authorities were terrifying as people pleaded for help from dispatchers in desperation and fear. In one of the released audio tapes, a woman a calls a 911 dispatcher and says that she is hiding under the concert stage and that there are people shot everywhere.
"There's a lot of people here that need ambulances," the woman tells the dispatcher. "There's people shot everywhere!"
In one call, which is time-stamped for nearly two minutes after police stated that gunfire was reported, one man can be heard telling a dispatcher that his best friend has been shot in the stomach. When the dispatcher asks if he's hurt too, the man says, "send everyone!"
"No, but there's a hundred people on the ground bleeding out, right now. Send everybody! There's ... people running for their lives right now. Please, there's another person shot in the leg. Please, hurry up!"
The last names and phone numbers of the callers were beeped out on the recordings released by the police. The audio clips were made public after multiple media organizations, including the Associated Press, obtained a court order for their release.