By Aaron Miller-
Over 50 people have been killed at a Las Vegas festival after a “lone wolf” gunman opened fire into an outdoor country music festival from the 32nd floor of Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on Sunday night.
Hundreds were injured in the mass shooting that turned the festival into a mass grave, as performer Jason Aldean was on the stage.
The sick gunman has been identified by law enforcement officials as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, a resident of Mesquite, Nevada
Paddock was eventually shot dead in the Mandalay Bay Resort, police officials said. Several witnesses spoke of hearting rounds and rounds of shots being fired, as frightened festival goers ran for their lives and took refuge wherever they could. Within minutes lives had been snuffed away by a man who wouldn’t have known his victims, but had some vexatious issue with the world. Paddock’s actions are just as bad as a terrorist attack, except that in this case, the killer’s motives are not known. The impact of his crazy act is devastating, the lives of several family members and well wisher’s have just been wrecked.
“We heard what sounded like firecrackers going off. Then all of a sudden we heard what sounded like a machine gun. People started screaming that they were hit… When we started running out there were probably a couple hundred [people] on the ground,” she told MSNBC.
“People kept dropping and dropping… People were getting shot one foot away from us,” she said. “People were trying to save their friends. There were gunshots everywhere. Helping them would’ve meant that we got shot too.”
“We believe there’s a couple off-duty officers that were attending the concert that may have died,” Lombardo said.
searching for the suspect’s companion, Marilou Danley, a 62-year-old Asian female, police chief, Lombardo, told reporters. The public’s assistance in finding two vehicles were also sought by police. A Hyundai Tuscon with the Nevada license plant number 114B40; and a Chrysler Pacifica Touring with the Nevada number 79D401. Flights to the airport were temporarily suspended to prevent any chance of further casualties of deaths.
Aldean- the Academy of Country Music’s Entertainer of the Year in April 2017- was on stage performing on the final night of a three-day Route 91 Harvest festival at the Las Vegas Village when disaster struck. Footage of the rounds fired was captured on film as many festival goers filmed the nightmarish scenario as they fled for their lives. Police are still conducting further investigation into the background of 64 year old Paddock, who without a doubt had a hidden motive for this cruel attack. A few reasons for the attack are easily imaginable. Paddock may be a lone terrorist who picked his moment to strike and cause maximum loss of life. If that is the case, he left no written note to explain his motive. Terrorists always have an underlying agenda for committing terrorist acts.
Alternatively, Paddock may simply be a sad and demented individual with mental health issues, who had decided to sacrifice his life just to destroy that of several others. This is the mindset of demented people like Paddock. Police are already working overtime to establish more concrete information about his life and past. Some hospitals had to turn down injurred people who were not in a life threatning position, because they were full to capacity. Once again, America will mourn the sudden and unforeseen mass killing in the hands of a gun man who just took lives away without a seconds consideration for the many more lives that would be destroyed as a result of his mindless violence.
Image: courtesy of twitter.com