Monday, October 9, 2017

Shot To Hell



Officials Release New Timeline Of Attack 
(L.A. Slimes)Police have dramatically changed their account of how the Las Vegas massacre began on Oct. 1, revealing Monday that the gunman shot a hotel security guard six minutes before opening fire on a country-music concert — raising new questions about why police weren’t able to pinpoint the gunman’s location sooner. 
Officials had previously said that gunman Stephan Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nev., shot Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos after Paddock had unleashed his deadly volley at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival, an assault that began at 10:05 p.m.
Officials had previously credited Campos, who was shot in the leg, with stopping the 10-minute assault on the concert crowd by turning the gunman’s attention to the hotel hallway, where Campos was checking an alert for an open door in another guest’s room.
But Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said Monday that Paddock shot Campos before his mass shooting — at 9:59 p.m. — and they now don’t know why Paddock stopped his attack on the crowd. 
Paddock, who had placed security cameras outside his room, shot Campos through the door of his suite, which was outfitted with a camera to survey the hallway, as was a room service cart parked outside. Police have said that Paddock fired 200 rounds into the hallway.
Investigators previously said that the security guard was shot after Paddock had already spent 10 minutes firing into the crowd of concertgoers gathered below the hotel.
In a timeline released last week, investigators said Paddock had stopped firing at the concert across the street at 10:15 p.m., and the first police officers arrived on the floor at 10:17 p.m. and encountered the wounded Campos at 10:18 p.m., who directed the officers to Paddock’s suite.
Police were not in a hurry to enter Paddock’s suite because the security guard’s arrival had halted the shooting, police implied in previously describing the timeline.  
But on Monday, the timeline changed.
“Mr. Campos was encountered by the suspect prior to his shooting to the outside world,” Lombardo said at a Monday news conference.
Police officers who started searching the hotel after the shooting began didn’t know a hotel security guard had been shot “until they met him in the hallway after exiting the elevator,” Lombardo said.
Charles "Sid" Heal, a retired Los Angeles County sheriff's commander and tactical expert, said the new timeline “changes the whole perspective of the shooting."
Heal said that if police had known immediately that a guard had been shot, they would have rushed the room while the gunman was still firing. He said it seemed to signal a breakdown in communication.
“It doesn't say much for hotel security,” Heal said.
After Campos was shot, a maintenance worker appeared on the 32nd floor and “Campos prevented him from receiving any injuries,” Lombardo said.
Representatives for the Mandalay Bay hotel casino and the union representing Mandalay Bay’s security guards did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Lombardo said investigators still had not uncovered a motive for Paddock’s attack and had found “zero” evidence of a second gunman. Investigators said Paddock was not seen with anyone before the attack.
Lombardo also revised the date on which police believe Paddock checked in to the Mandalay Bay hotel. While initially they said he had checked in on Sept. 28, three days before the shooting, they now believe he checked in on Sept. 25.
They continue to believe he was operating without a partner.
Lombardo said investigators had compiled 200 “instances” of Paddock moving around Las Vegas before the attack, and he was always alone.
The sheriff also revealed that Paddock had started drilling a hole next to the door of his suite, but the drilling apparently was not completed, and officials weren’t sure what the hole was for.
Lombardo said investigators had found “some evidence of medications” used by Paddock but declined to give any more information.
Whoopsie!


Thoughts, in order.

1) Door alarm? WTF?
1a) And WTF? Why would Campos walk up and try the stairwell first, rather than simply proceed to the elevator, and go straight to the floor in question?
And finding the stairwell door jammed, as he reported earlier, why would he then go investigating now-doubly suspicious activity, alone, unarmed, without radioing, waiting for additional security, etc. etc. etc.??

2) So a guest's door, not Paddock's suite, was the source of the alarm that Jesus Campos was investigating? And Paddock (presumably), rather than popping him once, hosed down the hallway, a straight corridor, and yet only hit Campos once, in the leg.
2a) How many (dozen) guests called downstairs and reported gunfire on 32, and/or reported the bleeding security guard they'd passed before ducking into the elevators to GTFO?
And if that number is zero, WTF again? An entire floor completely deserted at 10PM??
Nobody anywhere? Anyone? Beuller? Ferris Beuller...??

3) By shooting up the suite door, and winging the guard, Paddock has blown any hope of surprise to hell, because he's now alerted everyone on three floors that an armed lunatic with a machinegun is shooting up the hotel, and helpfully left bulletholes in the door to mark his suite with a big fat "X". Sh'yeah, right.

4) No shots have been fired at the music festival, so there's no confusion about that, no radio chatter, no frantic calls. What there should be is a 911 call from Mandalay Bay security to LVMPD: "Armed nut with a machinegun", and it should have gone out 5-6 minutes before the first shots were fired into the concert! So where's that 911 audio tape?

5) Which scores of LVMPD officers pulling concert security would have heard on their radios 1-3 minutes before any rounds had come flying in from the hotel machinegun nest!
And - BONUS - known WHERE the later gunfire was coming from when it happened!

6) But that didn't happen.

7) Meanwhile, instead of two brief periods before and after Campos' arrival, there is now one 6 minute window before firing commenced, and another window between the end of firing, and the 22:17 arrival of LVMPD, when anyone could have entered/exited 32-135, and moved to an adjacent suite, gone down another corridor, and used any of the stairwells, including the one right by 32-135, to exit the floor, because the stairwells were all unsecured, and LVMPD had no idea Campos was sitting and bleeding quietly outside the elevators, out of sight of Paddock's doors, and with no one watching who came or went.

8) As Paddock's suite wasn't the source of the door alarm, WTF shoot the security guard? Paddock, who'd watched the concert for three days, could've just waited for him to leave, and then gone to town, without interruption?

9) The "uncompleted" hole by his door could have been for some jury-rigged way to inside-lock the suite door(s) from the outside, after exiting, thus making them seem locked by the dead guy found by himself on the floor, and conveniently pinning the whole caper on him.
And leaving another person or persons free to split, ahead of the cops, and totally unseen and unsuspected.

10) So now, we have LVMPD sitting on a quiet room, with no gunfire, for over an hour, (after taking 18 minutes to get to a real shooting, five minutes before the festival shooting started?!?) for no reason. After all shooting has stopped. The only ear-witness the LVMPD has is now Campos, the guy miraculously wounded from less than 40 feet; officers outside never heard a single shot from the floor, including (pretty f**king suspiciously) the pop when Paddock is supposed to have given himself the coup de grace.


11) Absent video of him doing the actual deed, there is no longer any reason whatsoever to think Paddock shot anyone, including himself, and plenty of reasonable suspicion to think it very possible that person or persons unknown did this, and left the corpse there to take the rap. And we'll never know from Paddock, Campos, or the LVMPD, because none of them were around or in a position to testify to anything, until after it was all over.

12) Somebody dumping a dead body and about to commit mass murder would have every reason to pop the security guard. Especially if it was their door that had been the original alarm.

13) Paddock, OTOH, was guilty at that point of nothing but bringing his toys to the Vista Suite, and had committed nothing to raise any suspicion, let alone risk arrest for, or even to suffer an interruption.
(For bonus points, he had a pile of his own guns, in a suite he'd been in for nearly a week. So he couldn't be thinking - IF he was the shooter - that there was any way out but going out in a blaze of glory.)

14) So I'm not buying that he did this, or hauled the weapons into the room himself, unless they can show that happening on video, and including his video from inside the room.

15) He and the g/f were both out of his house for days. We have no idea if anyone else gained access, cracked his safe, scattered a beautiful Brady Campaign Poster display, popped Mr. Mystery Man, for a host of reasons far more plausible than "he just snapped", and then commenced the operation, leaving his corpse to get tagged for the crimes.

16) They also have him bouncing all over town (200 hits) in the days prior. So...doing what? Where? With whom? Why?

This case is just the case that keeps on giving, and until they provide absolute proof of the truth, people are going to be writing books and making movies about this one forever.

I smell something here.

23 comments:

Irish said...

Interesting thoughts here:


Within these latest developments it is entirely possible that Paddock would have had a great deal more effectiveness in the overall attack if he had finished the preparation prior to carrying out the shooting.

The hurried need to carry out some level of the attack despite the interruption might also explain why Paddock just smashed out the windows to begin firing etc. He may indeed have had a much more substantive plan, but was forced to drop that approach by the unexpected interruption prior to the shooting.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/10/09/holy-cow-the-official-mandalay-bay-massacre-narrative-just-completely-changed-latest-presser-video/

Aesop said...

But that's the whole point:
The guard was looking for an alarm on another door, not Paddock's.
Paddock wasn't doing anything, and he hadn't shot anyone yet.

So why start the ball at all, by shooting up the security guard, when you can just wait five or ten minutes until he goes away?
Or if he is coming to Paddock's door (why, BTW?) you answer the door, and tell him to f**k off.
Or even let him in, and give him a Tony Soprano pop in the back of the head at 0'.
Big suite like that, stairwell on one side, your own adjoining suite on the other, and likely no one even hears the shot.
Either way, Paddock's clean as snow, and no one the wiser until his first string of fire downrange.
Which took six minutes, and would have left him 10-15 unmolested minutes to split, after the shooting, if he intended escape, or 10-15 minutes more time to notch up a much higher body count, if his plan was to die in place.

Think of Die Hard: you don't shoot Sgt. Al Powell in the lobby, that just brings back-up and complications. You let him look around, decide everything's fine, and wander off, none the wiser.

Release the video of him manhandling bundles up to 32 for 2-5 days, and show us his final going-straight-to-hell selfie of Paddock shooting all those auto-fire strings, and this is a slam dunk.

Omit that, and there's no reason to believe he was ever alive in the room when the rounds were going downrange, and the new timeline means I could have exfiltrated the USC Trojan Marching Band playing Fleetwood mac's "Tusk" before the floor was locked down by the LVMPD, and no one would have seen so much as one piccolo or tuba.

Yet again:
Nothing about this incident, from A to Z, makes any sense whatsoever.

Which is why I think they're making it up as they go along.

Anonymous said...

Was the door alarm for a guest room or for the emergency stairwell?

Press is reporting that door to emergency stairwell was bolted shut.

Aesop said...

Don't know, but I'd like to know which door he was checking, and why.

Early report from the guard said the stairwell exit was "somehow" (cleverly not specified in reports) unable to be opened from inside stairwell, so he went back (down, probably), and rode the elevator back up to 32.

It's like nobody in charge of this can write a story with a beginning, middle, and ending, and fit in all the plot points.

It's like seeing Kindergarten Screenplay 101.
Tomorrow we're going to cover plot.

bigrigmig said...

Hey Aesop, Have had fun reading and lurking for the most part. I check you daily so call me a fan. Here's the "But,"-So they're not telling the truth. What keeps you from being Dave the basketball coach that keeps getting linked at Steve Quayle? Dude has had some fantastical conjecture from time to time but mostly misses. Do you have any hope that the "real truth" will come out? I love the fight that you are fighting (here comes some more 'but') but 9-11, Sandy Hook, etc. You have set yourself up as a target. Bracken's short fiction (prophesy) puts you straight in the cross hairs for getting disappeared. The day I can't link to you is the day I get moving before they come for the rest of us. Keep up the good fight- while you can.

Casper said...

I'm betting the new timeline is attempting to explain away some witnesses hearing a shot before the shooting started. In my opinion that shot would have been the execution of our patsy.

Unknown said...

http://i.4cdn.org/pol/1507441661314m.jpg

Why does a millionaire rent a car at an airport, and drive to another airport?

loren said...

Has anyone ever found any incident report, from authorities or the media, that you knew a lot about to be accurate?
Me neither.
Every damn thing you read a even see about this will be inaccurate in some detail. Important or otherwise. To try and analyze it with these early (or even final) reports is an exercise in futility. That's a fact even without the spin.
Do remember the FBI declared "nothing to see here folks" within a few hours.

Anonymous said...

“...the stairwell exit was "somehow" (cleverly not specified in reports) unable to be opened from inside stairwell...”

That could be SOP. If the stairwell is functioning as a fire escape they are often set to prevent re-entry once entered. Of course, a maintenance worker at some level would have a key, but it is not unusual for fire escape stairwells to be egress only.

Anonymous said...

With all the oddities about the handling of this event, one wonders why people bother with the BS like "He couldn't POSSIBLY have hit that many people at that range without SEAL training!!! Derp!" Reminiscent of the magicians OTHER hand.....

And I'm the LAST person to get into conspiracy theories.

Mark D

Anonymous said...

Aesop, the night of the shooting, cnn, msnbc, fox, all showed a gunman walking along a balcony at the MGM grand which was in green light. But the reporters kept saying it was the Mandalay bay. This gunman appeared to be firing a semi-auto. The sheriff said there was only one gunman at Mandalay bay and the networks stopped showing the video of the MGM gunman. I left on vacation the next morning. I have been away from tv, phone, computer till yesterday and I can't find a video of this. Was it debunked as a guy with a flash light or camera? I don't see anyone talking about it so I'm guessing it was debunked?

jim rock said...

Have you seen the Mike Adams(nat. news) 2nd shooter video?
If he's on the up and up, can't argue with physics.

Cavalryman40 said...

Balcony at MGM Grand? I don't believe the MGM Grand has any balconies in the rooms. Or any other Hotel built in the last 45 years or so. Can't have distraught gamblers jumping off them. That would be bad for business. Plus, the Tropicana lies in between the MGM Grand and the concert venue. While I believe there was more than one shooter, I believe they came from the same room. Besides someone had to cap Paddock on the way out the door.

RSR said...

Those windows are at least 1" thick reinforced glass, likely also with laminate film on/in them if not only for security then also for increased energy efficiency/help to keep the room cool along exterior wall during daytime. They are specifically made to be tremendously difficult to break; if laminate, then they'd be like trying to break out a car windshield...
The windows should also all be alarmed as well for breakage sensors, there are exterior cameras that would presumably alert to broken windows or falling glass, and hotel staff also supposedly does hourly exterior inspections as well...
Something like 15 minutes per window for holes of that size would be reasonable if not on the low end of time needed...

Insofar as planted, posted on your DERP thread, but since he was allegedly spotted heading to a desert shooting spot in Mesquite NV on the 29th. If the brass was planted as well as the guns, surely they would have used brass that was actually fired from at least one of the guns present. If so and if planted, sand/desert dirt inside some of the fired cases would be highly likely. Don't know if any more has come out regarding whether or not the carpet was damaged from hot brass -- early conjecture from pictures is that it was not...

A Texan said...

I'd love to know the following:

1) What, if any, gun shot residue was on Paddock's hands?

2) Does said GSR, if any was on his hands, match the GSR found in the room/suite (on the furniture, carpet, GUNS, etc.)?

3) How long did it take for SOMEONE to drill out/smash the windows prior to shooting them? Were there actually alarms on those windows? If so, when did they sound, and what did anyone DO about said alarms?

4) What was his escape plan? The LV Sheriff says that he planned to escape...so, how and what does he know?

5) WHERE ARE THE FREAKING FILMS? a) of the hallway from inside the suite; and b) of the inside of the suite. They supposedly exist...so, where TF are they?

6) Do the ballistics of bullets recovered from victims (intact enough to analyze, of course) match those of Paddock's weapons? If so, were those particular weapons fired, or are they clean? Does Paddock have any GSR from THOSE PARTICULAR WEAPONS on his hands?


There are LOTS more questions, but trying to weave this story out of anything but the straight truth will not be possible. There are simply too many angles to be able to fabricate EVERYTHING.

A Texan said...

Here is an interesting theory - not without its holes, as well - but interesting: http://thehayride.com/2017/10/think-mark-steyns-correspondent-las-vegas-massacre-figured/

Basically, this was done to focus attention on guns.

RSR said...

Ear pro -- I also want to know about hearing protection... Was there in fact any located in the room...

Signifying Nothing said...

Looks like someone broke into his Reno home, interesting.

RSR said...

More on security guard and maintenance worker:
"A maintenance worker said Wednesday he told hotel dispatchers to call police and report a gunman had opened fire with a rifle inside the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino hotel before the shooter began firing from his high-rise suite into a crowd at a nearby musical performance.

The revised timeline has renewed questions about whether better communication might have allowed police to respond more quickly and take out the gunman before he committed the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

Worker Stephen Schuck says he was checking out a report of a jammed fire door on the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay when he heard gunshots and a hotel security guard, who had been shot in the leg, peeked out from an alcove and told him to take cover.


"As soon as I started to go to a door to my left the rounds started coming down the hallway," Schuck said. "I could feel them pass right behind my head.

"It was kind of relentless so I called over the radio what was going on," he said. "As soon as the shooting stopped we made our way down the hallway and took cover again and then the shooting started again."

Police said Monday they believe gunman Stephen Paddock shot a hotel security guard through the door of his suite six minutes before he unleashed a barrage of bullets into the crowd of concert-goers, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds more.

The injured guard used his radio and possibly a hallway phone to also call hotel dispatchers for help.

That account differs dramatically from the one police gave last week when they said Paddock fired through the door of his room and injured the unarmed guard after shooting into the crowd.

The company that owns Mandalay Bay has questioned the new timeline.

"We cannot be certain about the most recent timeline," said Debra DeShong, a spokeswoman for MGM Resorts International. "We believe what is currently being expressed may not be accurate. This remains an ongoing investigation with a lot of moving parts.""
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/worker-warned-hotel-before-las-vegas-shooter-opened-fire-on-crowd/

RSR said...

More from LVPD, didn't respond to previous, another "maintenance worker" at his door during concert shooting is interesting... Also, only mentions cameras in hallway:
"
“He called it in before” the attack began, possibly using a hallway phone to contact hotel security, Clark County Assistant Sheriff Tom Roberts told The Times in an interview. “He manually called down and he used his radio to call. … That’s what we were briefed this morning.”

Roberts said he didn’t know precisely what time Campos called in his own shooting before the assault on the concert began, or whether the hotel immediately passed the information to police.

“We just don’t know how long it took him to call. He’s getting shot at, he’s running, he’s getting shot, he finds some cover, that’s when he starts calling in,” Roberts said.

A spokeswoman for the company that owns Mandalay Bay seemed to dispute the police timeline given to The Times on Tuesday but did not explain why.

“This remains an ongoing investigation with a lot of moving parts. As evidenced by law enforcement briefings over the past week, many facts are still unverified and continue to change as events are under review,” MGM Resorts International spokeswoman Debra DeShong said in a statement. “We cannot be certain about the most recent timeline that has been communicated publicly, and we believe what is currently being expressed may not be accurate.”

DeShong added, “It is not appropriate for us to comment further at this time on what remains an open matter for law enforcement.”

Paddock, 64, a real estate investor and professional gambler from Mesquite, Nev., may have also continued to shoot into the hotel hallway. There are some indications that a maintenance worker appeared in the hallway outside Paddock’s door during the shooting rampage, and the gunman may have interrupted his firing at the crowd to shoot once again into the hallway, Roberts said.

But, Roberts continued, “I don’t think it took long at all” for the hotel and for police to respond to the shooting.

Roberts said the hotel dispatched its own armed security team to the 32nd floor, which arrived “right around the same time” as Las Vegas police, who officials have said arrived on the floor at 10:17 p.m. But the gunman had already fired his final shots out his hotel window at 10:15 p.m.

By the time police entered the room, Paddock had killed himself.

Some police officers had already been inside the Mandalay Bay building responding to another, unrelated call when the attack happened, Roberts said.

There are no hotel surveillance cameras in the hotel hallway, only on the floor’s elevator banks, and the timestamps on the hotel’s communications systems have in some cases been inaccurate, hampering investigators’ ability to build an accurate timeline while they try to find a motive behind the attack, Roberts said.

“Please remember this — our focus has been all along finding if there were other unknown subjects and trying to trace his steps and trying to do all these things,” Roberts said. Compiling the sequence of events in the hallway, he said, “has not been the priority for us.”

He said officials hoped to release a complete timeline on Friday.

[...]

Officials said Paddock had mounted cameras outside his hotel room and first started shooting at Campos through the door of the room when the guard came to check an alert for an open door on another guest’s room. Campos was hit in the leg. Officials estimated Paddock shot 200 rounds into the hallway.

In addition to more than 20 guns, Paddock had a stockpile of what officials described as survivalist equipment in his hotel room, including a bullet-resistant vest, a law enforcement source said Tuesday. Also found in the room were tracer rounds — which light up and reveal the path of a bullet, which can help aim — but Paddock didn't use them, the source said.

Investigators also recovered survivalist equipment at Paddock’s home during searches.
"

RSR said...

Link for last: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-las-vegas-guard-20171010-story.html

Anonymous said...

The only theory that's making sense to me so far is Ann Coulter's idea that Paddock might be an arms-dealer who got took by his customer(s).

-- It explains why all that shit was up in Paddock's room.
-- It satisfies the "gray man" background of Paddock, as well as his fortune.
-- It satisfies the half-assed nature of the done-in-ten-minutes attack.

The one thing it doesn't explain is why the media and LEFO entities are 100% lockstep close-lipped on daring to breathe mention of a 600rpm 30-caliber belt-fed machinegun. (I.e., why do they give such a shit about that?)

Aesop said...

I'ma guess because they didn't fin a pile of .30 cal belt links scattered about the room, which renders that supposition on many people's parts totally moot.