Las Vegas concert goers say that a Hispanic woman yelled a shocking premonition about an hour before a gunman killed 58 people in a horrific massacre on Sunday night, Oct. 1.
“They’re all around,” the woman yelled. “You’re all going to die!”
The woman is believed to not be the same woman as Marilou Danley, the shooter’s girlfriend. Danley is Asian and was detained by police and later released.
“You’re all going to [expletive] die,” the woman screamed just 45 minutes before the first shots rang out.
Security escorted the woman and her companion out of the venue.
A 64-year-old man with multiple machine guns rained down gunfire from the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas hotel to country music festival on Sunday, slaughtering at least 58 people in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, before killing himself.
The barrage of bullets from the Mandalay Bay hotel into a crowd of 22,000 people lasted several minutes, sparking panic. At least 515 people were injured as some fleeing fans trampled each other while police scrambled to locate the shooter.
Police on Monday identified the gunman as Stephen Paddock, who lived in a retirement community in Mesquite, Nevada. They said they believed he acted alone and did not know why he attacked the crowd. ISIS claimed responsibility for the massacre, but U.S. officials said there was no evidence of that.
The preliminary death toll, which officials said could rise, eclipsed last year’s massacre of 49 people at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub by a gunman who pledged allegiance to ISIS.
Shocked concertgoers, some with blood on their clothing, wandered streets, where the flashing lights of the city’s gaudy casinos blended with those of emergency vehicles.
Police said Paddock had no criminal record. The gunman killed himself before police entered the hotel room he was firing from, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters.
“We have no idea what his belief system was,” Lombardo said. “I can’t get into the mind of a psychopath.”
Federal officials said there was no evidence to link Paddock to terrorist organizations.
“We have determined to this point no connection with an international terrorist group,” Aaron Rouse, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s special agent in charge in Las Vegas, told reporters.
U.S. officials discounted the claim of responsibility for the attack made by ISIS in a statement.
Multiple Machine Guns
Lombardo said there were more than 10 rifles in the room where Paddock killed himself. His arsenal included multiple machine guns, according to a law enforcement official.U.S. law largely bans machine guns.
Police found several more weapons at Paddock’s home in Mesquite, about 82 miles northeast of Las Vegas, Mesquite police spokesman Quinn Averett told reporters.
Nevada has some of the nation’s most permissive gun laws. It does not require firearm owners to obtain licenses or register their guns.
The dead in Las Vegas included a nurse, a government employee and an off-duty police officer.
President Donald Trump said he would travel to Las Vegas on Wednesday to meet with victims, their family members and first responders.
“It was an act of pure evil,” said Trump, who later led a moment of silence at the White House in honor of the victims.
The suspected shooter’s brother, Eric Paddock, said the family was stunned by the news.
“We’re horrified. We’re bewildered, and our condolences go out to the victims,” Eric Paddock said in a phone interview, his voice trembling. “We have no idea in the world.”
Just Kept Going On
Video of the attack showed panicked crowds fleeing as sustained rapid gunfire ripped through the area.“People were just dropping to the ground. It just kept going on,” said Steve Smith, a 45-year-old visitor from Phoenix, Arizona. He said the gunfire went on for an extended period of time.
“Probably 100 shots at a time,” Smith said. “It would sound like it was reloading and then it would go again.”
Las Vegas’s casinos, nightclubs, and shopping draw some 3.5 million visitors from around the world each year and the area was packed with visitors when the shooting broke out shortly after 10 p.m. local time (0400 GMT).
Shares of MGM Resorts International, which owns the Mandalay Bay, fell 4.8 percent on Monday to $31.01 a share.
Mike McGarry, a financial adviser from Philadelphia, was at the concert when he heard hundreds of shots ring out.
“It was crazy - I laid on top of the kids. They’re 20. I’m 53. I lived a good life,” McGarry said. The back of his shirt bore footmarks, after people ran over him in the panicked crowd.
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