At least 50 dead, more than 400 hurt in Las Vegas concert attack
Las Vegas (KNA) - Some 50 people died and more than 400 were hurt when a 64-year-old gunman with an arsenal of at least 10 rifles fired on a Las Vegas country music festival on Sunday, raining down bullets from a 32nd-floor window for several minutes before killing himself.
The death toll, which police emphasized was preliminary, would make the mass shooting the deadliest in U.S. history, eclipsing last year's massacre of 49 people at an Orlando night club by a gunman who pledged allegiance to Islamic State militants.
Some 22,000 people were in the crowd when a man police identified as Stephen Paddock opened fire, sparking a panic in which some people trampled on others, as law enforcement officers scrambled to locate the gunman.
Shocked concert goers, some with blood on their clothing, wandered the streets afterwards.
Police said they had no information about Paddock's motive, that he had no criminal record and was not believed to be connected to any militant group. Paddock 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.
A senior U.S. government official told Reuters that Paddock's name was not on any database of suspected terrorists.
Lombardo said there were more than 10 rifles in the room where Paddock killed himself after checking into the hotel on Thursday.
The dead included one off-duty police officer, Lombardo said. Two on-duty officers were injured, including one who was in stable condition after surgery and one who sustained minor injuries, Lombardo said. Police warned the death toll may rise.
As sunrise approached, police were still finding people who had taken cover during the attack, Lombardo said.
Source: Reuters