Redacted warrants and affidavits for the Mandalay Bay shooting have been published. Sadly, the data dump is only from local Vegas LE. It does not include federal investigation information. That’s important because federal agents would be investigating violations of federal law like the reported fully-automatic weapon(s) that fell out of the official narrative once victim-disarming politicians decided bump-fire was a good target for new gun people control laws. I still want to see ballistics reports that show what weapons were used, and what those weapons were.
Multiple warrants appear to use identical copy/pasted portions of the affidavits. This appears in quite a few:
Upon breaching the door, officers entered and located a deceased male suspect with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
[…]
Despite this suspect being neutralized, several other callers at various locations along The Strip continued to report active shooters inside of hotels and sightings of people with firearms.Due to the mass casualty event that was still very dynamic and multiple other callers reporting other ongoing incidents, it appeared there may be several other suspects involved.
He’s dead, but someone else is still shooting? And note: they found the dead body.
Um… Maybe not.
SW-17-971C&D, October 2, 2017, Telephonic Search Warrant, Sgt. Jerry MacDonald
SWAT officers arrived on the 32nd floor and pinpointed the shooter’s location to be in room 32-135. As SWAT officers breached room 135, they observed Stephen Paddock place a gun to his head and fire one round. (emphasis added-cb)
A local Fox5 report leaves open the possibilities that MacDonald misspoke, although that sounds like an oddly specific way of misstating that they found a dead body. “Sorry; I accidentally said they witnessed the dead guy put a gun to his head and kill himself.”
By Wednesday afternoon, after I drafted the above paragraph, MacDonald pretty much said just that:
“He absolutely killed himself before anyone got into the room,” Sgt. Jerry MacDonald told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
[…]
“That night was crazy. You get information coming in. It’s fluid, and none of it is confirmed,” he said. “And that’s par for the course when you’re doing telephonic search warrants. You base those search warrants based on what you believed up to that point.”
I could see telling the judge, “Yeah, officers saw him shoot himself” or “Subject killed himself on entry.” But specifically, “As SWAT officers breached room 135, they observed Stephen Paddock place a gun to his head and fire one round.”?
Two other affidavits put it this way:
Tactical entry was made into the room in order to preserve life under exigent circumstances and law enforcement located a deceased male with a gunshot wound.
and
Tactical entry was made into the room in order to preserve life under exigent circumstances and law enforcement located a deceased male with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“Apparent.” In light of the photo (warning: graphic) showing expended brass on top of the seemingly coagulated blood, we’re left with more questions: If he died on entry, how did brass end up on top of the blood, if the shooting in the suite had stopped an hour before? If he died earlier, and they found the body, how did brass end up on top of the blood?
There are other little oddities in the warrant info. Why did he need two “personal massagers”? Different types, for different applications? Two people? The fact that he had his passport with him might be significant or not. While in the US, most folks I know leave their passport secured at home. But reports indicate the Mandalay bay shooter was enough of a world traveler that he might have kept his in a go bag out of convenience.
What’s up with the vase and flowers?
Where did the missing hard drive go?
Then there’s the other redacted (except for the one instance a clerk initially missed) “person of interest,” which law enforcement claimed as a reason not to unseal the warrants, as revealing him would compromise the investigation. Only, due to said clerical error, we learn that Douglas Haig apparently did nothing but sell a box of a tracers at an Arizona gun show. Is he somehow significant, or was he a convenient excuse to keep the records sealed, hiding the oddities we’ve just seen?
Two entrees, two pair of gloves, two rooms, two shooting postitions, two personal massagers, ballistics calculations and scoped rifle and spotting scope, other rifles with no sights and bump-fire stocks…
One shooter.
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