At Least 59 Killed, 527 Hurt in Las Vegas Strip Massacre

6:11 PM EDT UPDATE:

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo says 59 people have been killed and 527 injured in a mass shooting Sunday night at an outdoor country music festival in Las Vegas.

Lombardo also says investigators found 18 firearms, explosives and several thousand rounds of ammunition in the home of suspected shooter Stephen Craig Paddock in Mesquite, Nevada.

The incident was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

 

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Big U.S. airlines are allowing passengers to change their plans for flights to or from Las Vegas without facing penalties following the worst mass shooting in recent U.S. history.

American Airlines, Delta Airlines and Alaska Airlines said Monday that they are offering waivers through Tuesday. A waiver from United Airlines lasts through Friday.

The Nevada Department of Tourism and Cultural Affairs released a statement Monday offering condolences to the victims of the shooting at a country music festival.

The statement says: “We know that Las Vegas will shine again, but for now we mourn the tragedy it has endured in this dark time.”

The department says it is offering support to local businesses that rely on tourism.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Two officials familiar with investigation say Las Vegas shooter had at least 17 guns in hotel room.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Officials are still loading bodies into vans to remove them from the scene of the Las Vegas shooting that killed at least 58 people.

The work continued more than 12 hours after a gunman opened fire from the Mandalay Bay hotel into a crowd of thousands of people at a country music concert.

Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo has said the hundreds of people who were wounded were taken to five southern Nevada hospitals.

Police have warned that identifying bodies from the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history will be a long, laborious process.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Las Vegas shooter Stephen Craig Paddock’s father was a notorious bank robber who tried to run down an FBI agent with his car in Las Vegas in 1960 and was on the agency’s most wanted list after escaping from a federal prison in Texas in 1968.

Paddock was a teen when an FBI poster issued after the escape said his father Benjamin Hoskins Paddock had been “diagnosed as psychopathic.”

The FBI warning about the elder Paddock said he should be considered “armed and very dangerous.” He had been serving a 20-year sentence for a string of Phoenix bank robberies.

Benjamin Hoskins Paddock died in 1998.

Stephen Paddock’s brother, Eric, confirmed their father’s identity in an interview Monday with The Orlando Sentinel.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Authorities say law enforcement members from across California are among those wounded in a mass shooting at a country music festival in Las Vegas.

The Los Angeles Police Department says Monday that an off-duty officer who was shot in the leg is expected to recover.

LA County Sheriff’s officials say two off-duty department employees were hit by gunfire Sunday. One was critically injured and the other is stable.

Orange County authorities say one off-duty sheriff’s deputy and two wives of department employees sustained non-life-threatening wounds.

Bakersfield police say one of its off-duty officers wounded in the gunfire is expected to survive.

Police in Ontario say a 24-year-old officer who was wounded is stable. The officer’s wife had minor injuries.

Sunday’s shooting killed 58 people and injured more than 500 others.

The White House observed a moment of silence for the victims of the mass shooting. Watch here:

 

[Breaking news update at 12:09 p.m. ET]

At least 58 people were killed Sunday night when the shooter fired hundreds of bullets into the crowd, police said.

Another 515 people were hurt in the gunfire and ensuing stampede at the outdoor Jason Aldean concert.

[Breaking news update at 8:06 a.m. ET]

LAS VEGAS — The Las Vegas Strip massacre has no known link to overseas terrorism or terror groups, a US official with knowledge of the case said.

Separately, a woman described as a “person of interest” after the attack is not believed to be involved in the shooting, police said in a statement.

“Marilou Danley is no longer being sought out as a person of interest,” the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said. “LVMPD detectives have made contact with her and do not believe she is involved with the shooting on the strip.”

[Breaking news update at 6:47 a.m. ET]

The gunman in the mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip has been identified as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, Las Vegas Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said Monday morning.

Lombardo also said authorities believe they have found the woman who was traveling with the suspect.

“We’re confident but not 100% sure we’ve located the female person of interest,” the sheriff said.

[Breaking news update at 6:38 a.m. ET]

At least 50 people were killed and more than 200 were injured in a shooting on the Las Vegas Strip on Sunday night, police said Monday morning. Police said the suspect has been identified.

[Previous story, published at 6:08 a.m. ET]

More than 20 people were killed and more than 100 injured in a shooting on the Las Vegas Strip on Sunday night, police said.

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters that police responded after reports of shots being fired from the Mandalay Bay toward the Route 91 Harvest festival around 10:08 p.m. Sunday (1:08 a.m. ET Monday).

“We determined there was a shooter on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay,” Lombardo said. Officers engaged the suspect, whom Lombardo described as a “local resident.” He said that the shooter is dead and that police believe that there are no other shooters. “Right now, we believe it’s a sole actor, a lone-wolf-type actor,” said Lombardo.

Police have identified the gunman but will not be naming him at this time, Lombardo said.

Though it’s too early to give an accurate estimate of the number of dead and wounded, Lombardo said that “20-plus” have died and “in excess of 100” people have been injured.

Police are searching for a woman named Marilou Danley who was traveling with the suspect, Lombardo said. He described Danley as an Asian woman, 4 ft 11 inches tall and 111 pounds. “We have not located her at this time and we are interested in talking to her,” he said.

Two Las Vegas police officers are being treated at a local hospital for injuries they sustained during the shooting, Lombardo said. One is in critical condition and the other sustained minor injuries.

In addition, the sheriff stated that there were off-duty officers attending the concert who may have died. The identities of the officers involved have not been released.

“Pray for Las Vegas,” the mayor tweeted. “Thank you to all our first responders out there now.”

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval said on Twitter that a “tragic & heinous act of violence has shaken the #Nevada family” and offered prayers to all those affected by “this act of cowardice.”

Concertgoers describe shooting

Route 91 Harvest, a large country music festival, was being held at the Mandalay Bay Center this weekend.

CNN spoke to three people who were attending the concert at the Las Vegas Village outdoor arena when gunfire broke out, causing them to flee. They described hearing the sound of gunfire while Jason Aldean was performing.

“We were close to the stages — about six rows from the front on the left hand side and he was just performing,” Rachel Dekerf said.

“People went down on the Mandalay side of the stage,” Joe Pitzel said. “I don’t know if people were ducking or if people were hit.”

Derkef filmed her escape from the venue using her cell phone, starting just after the first shots were fired.

She described ongoing gunfire, and played out the video she had recorded during which more than five minutes of gunfire were intermittently audible.

“The gunshots lasted for 10-15 minutes. It didn’t stop,” she said. “We just ran for our lives.”

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‘Go, go, go, go’

Derkef’s sister, Monique Dumas, said that everyone instantly crouched when they heard the shots.

“The band was rushed off the stage, the floodlights came on the crowd, and you see on the right hand of the stage the person who was injured, so they’re calling for medics, calling for security, then there was gunfire again,” Dumas said.

“It seemed there was a pause in the gunfire and the people in the yellow shirts were telling the people to ‘go, go, go, go’ … the gunfire never ended, it seemed like it went on and on and on,” she said.

A concertgoer told CNN affiliate KLAS that everybody was lying on top of each other trying to get out of the shooter’s way.

“Everybody’s hiding everywhere, they’re hiding under the bleachers and the stanchions, anywhere they could and everyone is telling us to ‘run, run as fast as you can,'” she told the news station. “And my husband and I ran out toward our car and there were people hiding underneath my car for cover and there was a gentleman who was shot and he said, ‘can you help me?’ and so I put him in my car and I had like six people in my car, people without shoes, running, just to get away.”

 

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‘Sounded like firecrackers’

Eyewitness Bryan Heifner spoke to CNN from a room in a hotel across from the Mandalay Bay, which he said he could see from his window.

“Mostly I heard the shots, just so many shots — I just thought it was a semi braking with the air brakes, but then I went downstairs and saw people running and looking for family,” he said.

“I immediately went back to my room, locked the door, turned the lights off.”

Another witness told CNN affiliate KSNV that the shooting sounded like firecrackers at first.

“It didn’t sound normal, it sounded like machine guns and it was like several rounds, it was like hundreds of rounds,” she told the news station.

“My boyfriend had me move behind a building here because it just didn’t sound right,” she told KSNV. “And then we hid behind a building and we could just hear hundreds of rounds going off and then about 10 minutes later the police came and just blocked off all the streets.”

She said she was about a block from the Harvest 91 Festival.

Facebook has set up a crisis response page to help people establish whether their loved ones are safe.

Developing story – more to come

The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2017 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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