Las Vegas Police Close Vegas Shooting Investigation, Claim Motive Is “Unknown”
Laura Loomer
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Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo held a press conference on Friday morning to release what he says is the “final” police report on the Las Vegas Shooting.
On October 1, 2017, police and FBI say alleged shooter Stephen Paddock opened fire from his 32nd floor suite at the Mandalay Bay onto a crowd of 22,000 concertgoers who were attending the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival.
Paddock, who has been deemed a “lone shooter” by disgraced Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo and Aaron Rouse, the Special Agent in Charge of Las Vegas FBI, killed 58 people and injured nearly 900 people.
For the past ten months since the deadliest mass shooting in U.S.history, LVMPD, FBI, and Mandalay Bay have remained adamant in their claims that Paddock was a lone shooter who had no accomplices and that the mass shooting was not an act of terrorism.
During Friday’s press conference, Lombardo reiterated all of those previous claims when he released the Metropolitan Police Department’s final report, but said investigators were not able to determine a motive.
“What we have been able to answer are the questions of who, what, when, where and how,” Lombardo said at the press briefing. “What we have not been able to definitively answer is the ‘why’ Stephen Paddock committed this act.”
Although Lombardo claims the public may never know what the motive behind the shooting was, he himself declared, “I personally think it [the Las Vegas shooting] was terrorism.”
Terrorism is defined as the use of violence with the attempt of pursing a political or religious goal. Lombardo used Friday’s presser to tell the media that the investigation was complete because police were unable to determine a motive.
However, by definition, if something is called labeled as terrorism, it must have a political or religious motive.
Hours after the Las Vegas shooting,ISIS claimed responsibility through their official news agency, Amaq.
“In reference to the 2,000 investigated leads, 22,000 hours of video, 252,000 images obtained and approximately 1,000 served legal processes, nothing was found to indicate motive on the part of Paddock or that he acted with anyone else,” the final report states.
Worth noting, Lombardo’s claim that the Vegas shooting was an act of terrorism not only contradicts the official narrative that he and the FBI have been spoon feeding the public for the past nine months, but it suspiciously comes at a rime when MGM Resorts is claiming in their federal lawsuit against the Las Vegas Shooting victims that the Casino conglomerate is not liable on grounds that the shooting was an act of terrorism.
Based on the abrupt change in language used by Lombardo and MGM Resorts, one has to wonder whether or not Lombardo’s statement was made in an attempt to help MGM Resorts with their lawsuit against the victims.
It is worth noting that Paddock, according to the report, spent $1.5million over the past two years, much of which was spent at MGM Resorts Casinos, including Mandalay Bay.
During the press conference, Lombardo said he doesn’t anticipate that there will be any more arrests concerning the investigation, and he said investigators have completed their discussions with MariLou Danley, Paddock’s girlfriend whose finger prints were found on ammunition inside Paddock’s room.
In January, police arrested Douglas Haig, an Arizona man who is now facing federal charges of conspiracy to illegally manufacture and sell the ammunition. Haig has been accused of supplying Paddock with armor-piercing rounds, and is the only person who has been charged in connection with the case. Haig has pleaded not guilty.
Although a plethora of questions concerning the case were asked during the press conference, not a single reporter asked Lombardo about Brian Hodge, an Australian man who claimed to have been on the 32nd floor at the time of the shooting. When Hodge was interviewed by various media outlets concerning the Las Vegas shooting, he claimed that he was in the room next door to Paddock and that he had been hiding in the bushes for hours outside of Mandalay Bay following the shooting. However, further investigations later proved that Hodge lied about his whereabouts the night of the shooting, and was not staying in the room next to Paddock.
It is unknown where Hodge currently is and what he has been doing since the Las Vegas shooting, but there is no denying the fact that investigators dropped the ball on investigating a man who may have possibly been involved in the events that transpired the night of October 1, 2017.
Other aspects of the final report include information about Paddock’s health. According to the report, Paddock believed he was sick, and often complained to his girlfriend, MariLou Danley that he was ill and doctors could not cure him. The report also details how Danley told investigators that Paddock has been diagnosed with a “chemical imbalance.”
Lombardo stated that he hoped the final report would provide closure to the victims of the Vegas shooting, but once again, the report released by LVMPD failed to provide any new answers or insight into why 58 people were shot dead from the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay.
Over the past three months, police have released 13 batches of investigative documents, 911 audio, police reports, witness statements and video, all of which was ordered to be released by a Nevada judge due to LVMPD and FBI’s initial refusal to cooperate with the media and release information regarding the case.
The FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit is expected to release psychological profile on Paddock later this year.
Read more about ISIS and the Las Vegas shooting here.
Read more about Brian Hodge here.
Read More about MGM Resorts Lawsuit against the Las Vegas shooting victims here.
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