#Gunman Stephen Paddock

[tendie-defender]

This is some bullshit motive they just threw together.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 10.1 (after 1950)

1953 – Andhra State is formed, consisting of a Telugu-speaking area carved out of India's Madras State. 1953 – A United States-South Korea mutual defense treaty is concluded in Washington, D.C. 1955 – The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is established. 1957 – The motto In God We Trust first appears on U.S. paper currency. 1958 – The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics is replaced by NASA. 1960 – Nigeria gains independence from the United Kingdom. 1961 – The United States Defense Intelligence Agency is formed, becoming the country's first centralized military intelligence organization. 1961 – East and West Cameroon merge to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon. 1961 – The CTV Television Network, Canada's first private television network, is launched. 1962 – James Meredith enters the University of Mississippi, defying racial segregation rules. 1964 – The Free Speech Movement is launched on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. 1964 – Japanese Shinkansen ("bullet trains") begin high-speed rail service from Tokyo to Osaka. 1966 – West Coast Airlines Flight 956 crashes with no survivors in Oregon. This accident marks the first loss of a DC-9. 1968 – Guyana nationalizes the British Guiana Broadcasting Service, which would eventually become part of the National Communications Network, Guyana. 1969 – Concorde breaks the sound barrier for the first time. 1971 – Walt Disney World opens near Orlando, Florida. 1971 – The first practical CT scanner is used to diagnose a patient. 1975 – Muhammad Ali defeats Joe Frazier in a boxing match in Manila, Philippines. 1978 – Tuvalu gains independence from the United Kingdom. 1979 – Pope John Paul II begins his first pastoral visit to the United States. 1979 – The MTR, Hong Kong's rapid transit railway system, opens. 1982 – Helmut Kohl replaces Helmut Schmidt as Chancellor of Germany through a constructive vote of no confidence. 1982 – EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) opens at Walt Disney World in Florida. 1982 – Sony and Phillips launch the compact disc in Japan; on the same day, Sony releases the model CDP-101 compact disc player, the first player of its kind. 1985 – Israel-Palestinian conflict: Israel attacks the Palestine Liberation Organization's Tunisia headquarters during Operation Wooden Leg. 1987 – The 5.9 Mw  Whittier Narrows earthquake shakes the San Gabriel Valley with a Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe), killing eight and injuring 200. 1989 – Denmark introduces the world's first legal same-sex registered partnerships. 1991 – Croatian War of Independence: The Siege of Dubrovnik begins. 1994 – Palau enters a Compact of Free Association with the United States. 2000 – Israel-Palestinian conflict: Palestinians protest the murder of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah by Israeli police in northern Israel, beginning the "October 2000 events". 2001 – Militants attack the state legislature building in Kashmir, killing 38. 2009 – The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom takes over the judicial functions of the House of Lords. 2012 – A ferry collision off the coast of Hong Kong kills 38 people and injures 102 others. 2014 – A series of explosions at a gunpowder plant in Bulgaria completely destroys the factory, killing 15 people. 2014 – A double bombing of an elementary school in Homs, Syria kills over 50 people. 2015 – A gunman kills nine people at a community college in Oregon. 2015 – Heavy rains trigger a major landslide in Guatemala, killing 280 people. 2015 – The American cargo vessel SS El Faro sinks with all of its 33 crew after steaming into the eyewall of Hurricane Joaquin 2017 – An independence referendum, later declared illegal by the Constitutional Court of Spain, takes place in Catalonia. 2017 – Fifty-eight people are killed and 869 others injured in a mass shooting at a country music festival at the Las Vegas Strip in the United States; the gunman, Stephen Paddock, later commits suicide. 2018 – The International Court of Justice rules that Chile is not obliged to negotiate access to the Pacific Ocean with Bolivia.

[reasoningdaily]

A 'stalker' who threatened to recreate America's worst mass shooting in history at the Stanley Cup Finals was thwarted by cops just hours before the Vegas Golden Knights clinched the ice hockey championship on Tuesday night.

Las Vegas Metro police successfully foiled Matthew DeSavio's chilling threat to carry out what would have been a devastating massacre before the eyes of a franchise-record crowd of 19,058 at the T-Mobile Arena.

Just before noon on Tuesday, police were called to a Las Vegas business by a person who told officers DeSavio had stalked them for about a decade, officers said.

DeSavio, 33, later arrived at the business where cops arrested him, according to documents obtained by Nexstar's KLAS Wednesday. 

Police said that DeSavio was also posting threatening messages about the Stanley Cup Finals on Facebook. It was Vegas Golden Knights who triumphed over the Florida Panthers, sparking wild scenes of jubilation in 'Sin City'.

DeSavio threatened to recreate the devastating 2017 Mandalay Bay mass shooting (people run away on October 1, 2017)

One terrifying message by DeSavio read: 'I'm coming for you guys tonight and I hope you get every [expletive] police officer in Vegas Golden Knights there to defend you!'.

'Hope Sin City is ready for the Mandalay Bay massacre part duex [sic].'

DeSavio's post was a sickening reference to America's worst ever mass shooting which left 61 people dead, including the killer, and hundreds others injured.

Lone gunman Stephen Craig Paddock used automatic weapons to rain down gunfire on a crowd of 22,000 people attending the Route 91 Harvest Festival on October 1, 2017. 

The 64-year-old multimillionaire, who shot himself afterwards, was found dead with 16 guns in a room in the Mandalay Bay hotel, across the street from the festival. 

Six years on from the horror massacre, DeSavio was arrested by police outside of a Vegas business around five hours before the game began.

Police had also been contacted by a concerned member of the public who had seen DeSavio's Facebook posts which declared his intention to 'to conduct a mass shooting at T-Mobile Arena'. 

'As patrol officers were placing DeSavio into the patrol car, DeSavio declared several excited utterances asking if anyone had seen his Facebook posts yet and that the Knights need to win by a certain amount or he will do a repeat of the Mandalay Bay 1 October shooting,' police said. 

DeSavio has made previous threats before. This post, still on his Facebook, again references the October 1 Mandalay Bay mass shooting

Police said that DeSavio had been adjudicated for prior stalking and harassment cases. They did not reveal whether the 33-year-old actually had access to weapons, although after his arrest, police said they were aware of the threat.

Worryingly, police had also had reports of another 'disturbing Facebook post' made by DeSavio on October 26.

'Something big is about to hit the Vegas Strip. #October1stwasjustapreview! Let's [expletive] [expletive] up before I literally #blowup Paradise NV,' the post said, according to police. 

Cops questioned DeSavio following the threat last year after he agreed to meet them at a fast-food restaurant. During questioning, DeSavio is understood to have 'stated he wanted to drive his vehicle into the Mandalay Bay.'

DeSavio was ordered to complete a competence evaluation by a judge in November and awaited treatment for 78 days - something his public defender said violated his due process rights.

Judge Christy Craig concluded in March that the state failed to transport DeSavio to to behavioral health treatment in a timely manner.

DeSavio refused to be taken from the Clark County Detention Center to the Regional Justice Center for his initial appearance on Wednesday. Pictured: The Vegas Golden Knights pose with the Stanley Cup

After then being remanded in custody for eight days, the judge dismissed the charges and he was released in April.

He faces charges of stalking, making a false threat regarding an act of terrorism, aggravated stalking and violating a temporary protection order for the threats made Tuesday.

DeSavio refused to be taken from the Clark County Detention Center to the Regional Justice Center for his initial appearance on Wednesday. 

His court appearance was rescheduled for June 20 with no bail. 

[aneternalfangirl]

I was in Vegas during the shooting

For about five minutes two days ago, I thought I was going to die.

I have been thinking about writing this post for almost 24 hours now, because I can process my emotions and thoughts much better when I write them down. I am safely home in Dallas now, but I still wasn’t sure whether or not I should write and post this. There are two reasons for my hesitation: firstly, I don’t want to take any attention away from the real victims and their family and friends, all the people who were impacted far more than I was. Secondly, no one in my family knows I was so close to the attack (a few minutes away from the concert when it all happened). I have lied and told everyone that I was in my hotel room the whole time.

I wasn’t.

My husband (let’s call him M) and I had a day to spend in Vegas, with another day set aside for a tour to the Grand Canyon. We got to Vegas early in the morning, spent the day sightseeing, and went to see the Fremont Street Experience at night. It was amazing, and I remember almost crying with happiness. I remember being grateful that I was getting to see this, that I had my wonderful husband to share these once in a lifetime memories with. I told M I loved him. He must have been in the same headspace as me, because he told me he was grateful that I had chosen to spend my entire life with him. I was happy and content.

I have thought back to that moment a lot since then. It was so sappy, and we weren’t even drunk. It was a scene out of a movie. If we had died, that scene would have been the center of the montage of happy moments from our marriage that played when the credits rolled. Why did we have that moment?

I wish now that we had somehow decided to stay at Fremont Street till after the shooting, but we still wanted to see the Swarovski Midnight Celebration at the Grand Bazaar Shops, so we came back to the strip, intending to get dinner and then go to the Bellagio.

We went to a P. F. Chang’s because I had a BOGO coupon. My husband chose the chair across from me while I slid gratefully into a booth. We ordered, sat and waited for our food. It was an ordinary night, and I pulled out my phone to while away the time. We were ravenous.

I still don’t know exactly what happened, though with the distance of time I have a theory. There was a loud bang, then people just started hitting the floor of the restaurant. M yelled “get down!” and I did, even though it was difficult because our table was too close to the booth. He yanked me to him, then people started shifting into one big huddle behind the couch. There was broken glass and upturned chairs, but it was only a couple of steps so we shifted over there, crouched down. There was silence other than one lady right in front of me who was yelling out for a guy we couldn’t see. I remember hoping she would shut up or “they” would find us. I didn’t even know who “they” were or what threat they were making. M said there was a shooter, and we might have heard a gunshot before.

I didn’t hear anyone making threats, or any gunshots. I was the last person in the huddle, meaning there was no one behind me. That terrified me, because my back felt very exposed. What was going on? Why had we hit the floor? Why were we hiding in this really badly exposed area behind this couch?

My phone, which was on vibration mode, began to buzz. It was my sister from India. I tried to peer around the couch, see what was going on, but I couldn’t see anyone on the floor. I looked up and saw a few people looking down at us from the staircase landing. They didn’t look menacing or deadly. Instead, they were staring curiously at us, perhaps wondering what the fuck we were doing. I wondered that myself. My heart was thudding so hard. There had been a gunshot (that loud bang that had started it all). I was wondering if my new blue and white dress would be the one I would die in. I was glad M was clutching my hand.

Then, suddenly, a guy yelled at us to leave. People scrambled up and towards the doors, and I remember thinking maybe he was the shooter. My bag was in the booth, and my passport was in it. I dived for it. He screamed again, “Go, leave!” and threw a chair. My memory is hazy, but I think he threw it over my head and behind me. Maybe he threw it down in front of me. But I was terrified in that moment and ran for the door. M was right next to me.

We ran out of the restaurant and down some stairs, M still telling me we had definitely heard a gunshot. I asked him why he ducked and asked me to get down. He said it was because he saw everyone else get down.

We didn’t stop running towards our hotel. Just get off the streets, I remember thinking. There’s a gunman somewhere, just get to your room. We didn’t know it then, but we were walking towards the site of the incident. We saw other people running, and a woman crying as she told her friend she had heard shots. My brother-in-law was calling M. My sister was calling me. I finally picked up her call. She was so panicked, I made a split-second decision to lie and say we were in our hotel room, safe. I didn’t want her to worry, and I definitely didn’t want my mom to worry. She has a lot of medical problems, my mom, and this would be too much of a shock for her.

I asked my sister what happened, and she told me there had been a shooting. It was on the news in India. We kept moving, afraid of a shooter coming out of somewhere. Going down the escalator felt like waving a red flag at some hidden assailant, and I wondered if a bullet would just come from somewhere and kill me before I knew what was happening. The fountains of the Bellagio across the street rose up as we were running, and the sound made my heart stop. Everything sounded like a dreaded gunshot.

People were running helter-skelter, and we would change directions as soon as we saw a wave of people running in a direction. “Don’t go where they are all running away from,” said M. But where could we go? Where was safety?

The answer, of course, was our hotel, the Flamingo. We ran towards it, barely talking, focused on getting safe. There were yellow barricades on the pavement, and people were just escaping into a casino, so we did too, even though we were literally next door to the Flamingo. Getting inside was a higher priority though, so we fled into the casino. I just Googled and realized we must have been in Bally’s. Finally, finally, we were safely inside. I whipped out my phone to Google.

News had already started pouring in, and we sat and read it all. There was a video already on Twitter, but when we watched it we thought people were just hitting the ground to save themselves instead of being shot. The official count was at least two dead and fifty injured.

So we sat there, in front of slot machines, tired, scared, and relieved to be alive. All around me, people were playing slots, and we would jump up every time someone yelled happily or laughed out loud. How can they care so little? I remember thinking. Don’t they care about what’s going on?

We wanted nothing more than to go to our room and rest, so I asked one of the several people guarding the door what was going on and when we would be allowed to leave. She told me to stay put, that we would be allowed to leave in a hour or so. I asked some other casino employee what was going on too. He very calmly assured me that everything was under control, but the police wanted us off the streets for our safely, so the doors had been locked. He assured us we were safe, and I chose to believe him.

We sat, then walked around, then sat again. My phone was in my hand, and I was constantly googling what happened. It was a long wait for us. There were almonds in my purse, and three of them became my dinner. I felt that I would puke if I ate anything else. Again and again, the fear of the past hour would catch up on me. I am shivering and my heart is thudding even as I write this.

The callousness of the people inside the casino still bothers me. They were laughing and gambling and drinking while all of us sat there in exhausted numbness, waiting to be told that we could go out again. Maybe they didn’t know yet, maybe they didn’t care because they had been inside the whole time and it was a distant event for them already. It was ugly, however, the way they laughed and enjoyed themselves, while a rabid gunman walked the streets (or so I believed at the time).

At about 2 pm or so, we sat down and talked with a woman. She told me that they had been a group of seven who had gotten separated when they ran. She was with an Australian guy who was playing slots, and looked far less rattled than her. After we sat there for a while, discussing what had happened, he took off to go see if they would let us out.

The front doors of the casino were still closed, but they were letting people take cabs from the back door. We decided to get a cab, all four of us, since we only had to be dropped next door. When we got there, the guy at the door told us we could hoof it if we wanted, so we did. It took us barely two minutes to be safe inside the Flamingo. We closed the curtains before turning on the light.

And then we were finally safe. Our Grand Canyon tour started at six the next morning (or rather that morning) so we had to sleep. It was difficult, however. I kept scratching my feet after some itch or the other. I was cold but I was also sweating. It was strange, but I finally did sleep.

That’s it, the story of the pandemonium as I saw it. I still wonder what the hell happened in that restaurant, because I know Stephen Paddock didn’t leave his room. Maybe someone came in with a bang of the door and yelled there was a shooter. Our panic did the rest. Why did that guy throw that chair? I still think about those few minutes and get chills. The kitchen staff had been trying to tell us to calm down when we fled, so I do believe we over-reacted. I cracked the screen of my phone when I hit the ground.

I am sorry if I rambled, it’s just that writing this stuff down helps me deal with it, with the terror of facing my own mortality. I am so sorry for what happened, for all the people who were affected, for all the people sitting in hospital waiting rooms waiting for news, all the people whose lives will never be the same again.

I am also angry. I am so very angry that this man is being painted as a lone wolf (the fuck does that mean?) who was a retiree with no prior signs that he was unhinged, that he was going to do something like this. He wasn’t a lone wolf. He had a girlfriend, a mom, a brother, all of whom, by all accounts, knew nothing of his plans.

Guess what, fuckers? He bought an arsenal of automatic weapons, carried them all into a hotel room across the street from a giant crowd. He was a man who decided that buying thirty (or more?) weapons was important. He was not unhinged or disturbed. He was a destructive psychopath who did this because he could, because he could walk into the local store Guns & Guitars and walk out with the means to kill anyone he wanted to. He was not an unhinged man, he was a man who planned this with great care, and who wasn’t stopped because apparently, it is okay for a man to have an arsenal in his home.

He wasn’t stopped. He was the son of a bank robber who ultimately escaped from prison and spent most of the 1970s on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. No one frowned when he bought another gun, scratching their head and saying, “hold on, why do you need that many?” He had twelve ‘Bump Stocks’ to make his rifles rapid-fire. Why would anyone ever need that? Was he going off to war?

You Americans insist guns are your right, you need them to be safe, to protect yourselves. Who do you need to protect yourselves from? Are you afraid of the arsenal in your neighbor’s basement? Maybe he is afraid of yours.

How exactly is Stephen Paddock not a terrorist? I was fucking terrified all night, and I wasn’t even that close to the incident. Think of all those people, running confused and terrified because of this one man, trying and failing to find shelter from his attack. Think of all the people whose lives he cut short, and of those who will never be the same again. How is he not a terrorist? This was an act of domestic terrorism by a man who wanted to kill a lot of innocent bystanders for some reason he dreamt up. He wanted that terror in his victims. I am sure he was thrilled to see the results of his actions before he killed himself. You gave this psychopath the means to kill all those people. You gave him the guns and he did the rest.

I am so sorry for all the people who were affected in any way by his actions. I am sorry for all the lives that will never be, for all the people who will forever remember that night like I will. I am sorry for the people who have lost their loved ones forever, or are waiting to find out if they will. I am sorry you live in a country that is more interested in not pissing off the NRA than it is in making you safe. I am praying for all those in the hospital, praying for the souls of the departed. I naively hope nothing like this ever happens to anyone again.

[fresherbrine]

[thewwshow]

59 Dead, 527 Injured in Las Vegas “Country Music” Festival Mass Shooting A gunman on a high floor of a Las Vegas hotel rained a rapid-fire barrage on an outdoor concert festival on Sunday night, leaving at least 59 people dead, injuring 527 others, and sending thousands of terrified survivors fleeing for cover, in one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history. Read The Damn Story

[thetragicdeathofcommonsense]

Taxi Driver

My taxi driver was a young black man.

I knew he was not American before he said a word. On the dashboard his license, encased in yellowed plastic, read Rashoud Umagradiah.

Or something unpronounceable like that.

He was smiling in the photo, bright white teeth against a coal black face.

I asked him where he was from and he said Nigeria. I wasn’t surprised. So far that week I had ridden in a dozen cabs in Las Vegas and half the drivers were from Nigeria. The others were also from countries in Africa, except for one driver who was from Brooklyn.

“You’re kind of the odd man out,” I had said to him.

“How’s that?”

“You’re a taxi driver from America who speaks English.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m a dying breed all right.”

The young black taxi driver had picked me up at the Bellagio Casino where I had left several hundred dollars of my money on the poker table. A flush on the river had beat my two pair, a suck out by an obnoxious guy from Omaha.

“How is it over there in Nigeria?” I asked my driver.

“Not as good as it is here,” he said with an accent thick as mud.

It was the same answer I get from every taxi driver who is in America from someplace else. Doesn’t matter where that other place is. If it was better there than in America, then they wouldn’t be in America.

He was taking me to the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino where I was staying. I’ve made that same trip, and trips to and from other casinos throughout Vegas, hundreds of times over the years. Inside the casinos is nice. Outside it’s all concrete and flashing lights and unbearable heat and the slowest traffic signals on the planet. It’s the only place in America, other than New York City, where it can take 15 minutes to drive two blocks.

To kill time I always talk to taxi drivers. They are a captive audience. It’s easy to get them to talk. They’re as bored driving as I am being driven. I ask them about what it’s like where they are from. It’s an easy way to get a short history or geography lesson from someone with more intimate knowledge of the subject than a college professor. So many times what I hear from someone who lived in a particular country and still has family in that country is contrary to what I hear about that country on the news. Their assessment is much more on point than a CNN correspondent’s assessment.

I seldom ask them about the things that are happening in the city in which they are driving me. That’s not interesting or illuminating. The hotel concierge can give me that information. What the concierge can’t tell me is what the food lines are like in Somalia.

Still, that day, I wasn’t interested in hearing more about Nigeria from my seventh Nigerian taxi driver that week.

Two weeks earlier 64-year-old Stephen Paddock had fired more than 1,100 rounds from high powered rifles from his suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds more who were attending a country music festival across the street from Mandalay Bay.

“So, were you working the night of the Mandalay Bay shooting?” I asked.

We were stopped at a traffic light on the Strip when I asked the question.

Rashoud turned and looked at me in the back seat.

“I was there when it happened.”

“Excuse me.”

“I was right there when the shooting started.”

I didn’t say anything, not sure if I had heard him right or not.

“I was stopped at the light next to the festival. I was the first cab in line. I thought it was fireworks from the festival. I rolled my window down and looked up but there were no fireworks. I didn’t know bullets were going right over the top of my cab.”

I didn’t say a word. Just waited.

“I didn’t know what was happening. Then all these people starting climbing over the wall from the festival and running across the Strip. The light changed but I couldn’t go because the street was filled with people. They were everywhere, and I still heard the fireworks.”

“Did you have any passengers?”

“No, it was just me. But then five people opened the back door and got into my cab. They were screaming for me to go, to get out of there. But I still couldn’t move. There were so many people running in the street.”

Rashoud looked at me in the rearview mirror. He had paused.

“Then that door opened,” he said slowly, pointing to the front passenger side door.

“A young man got into the cab. He was wearing a white shirt and it was covered in blood. He was not hysterical like the people in the back. He was very calm. I asked him if he was hurt and he said no, that it wasn’t his blood. I asked him whose blood it was and he said it was his friend’s blood. He said his friend had been shot in the stomach. I asked him where his friend was and he said his friend was still at the festival. He said his friend told him, “Save yourself. Go.’”

I had goosebumps on my arms. A few minutes ago I was standing in a cab line, upset about losing a big hand of poker, and now I was hearing a true-life story of epic proportions in the intimacy of a taxi.

“Then what happened?”

“The Strip cleared enough that I could drive through. I drove to Planet Hollywood and let them all out. Then I went back.”

“Excuse me?”

“I went back.”

“Why would you do that?”

“To get more people out of there.”

Rashoud drove back. By then there were only a few festival-goers left. He picked up a local woman and drove her to her house a few miles off the Strip. She told him about the pandemonium that broke out when the first people started falling from gunshots. On the way to her house dispatch called and ordered all the taxis in the city back to the taxi station. Police did not want any taxis on the road that the gunman might commandeer to make an escape.

“So I took my taxi in and then I went home.”

Rashoud said the next day the owner of the taxi company had all the drivers gather at the station. The owner talked a bit about what had happened and what to expect at work that day. Then he said, “Is Rashoud here?”

“I was scared to death. I had six people in my cab that night. You are only supposed to have a maximum of five people. I thought I was going to be fired.”

“What happened?”

“He called me up to the front of the room and said he had seen my cab on the news from the casino video camera footage. He said he had seen me save those six people and that he was very proud of me.”

Rashoud was quiet for a while. The Hard Rock was less than a block away.

“You know what I remember most?” he said.

“What?”

“When those people were in my cab, when they finally stopped screaming and yelling, it was so very quiet. It was so quiet I could hear their hearts beating.”

We pulled into the Hard Rock. I handed Rashoud the fare and a big tip. I started to open the door, stopped and turned to him.

“You know, you should be very proud. You’re not even from here. This isn’t your country or your people, and you risked your life to save them. That’s amazing.”

Rashoud dismissed the praise and simply said, “We are all humans.”

[charvests]

Las Vegas police release video footage recorded inside gunman Stephen Paddock’s hotel suite

Police released footage showing what officers found inside the gunman's room after the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. from Las Vegas police release video footage recorded inside gunman Stephen Paddock’s hotel suite via Las Vegas police release video footage recorded inside gunman Stephen Paddock’s hotel suite May 02, 2018 at 09:28PM

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#1yrago Mandalay Bay hotel owner sues more than 1000 victims of the Vegas gunman

The Mandalay Bay hotel was used by Stephen Paddock as a vantage point to slaughter dozens and hurt hundreds more in October 2017's gun massacre on the Las Vegas strip. Now the hotel's owner, MGM Resorts International, is suing his victims—more than 1000 of them—to warn them off trying to hold it in any part responsible.

Las Vegas attorney Robert Eglet, who has represented several Oct. 1 victims, said the grounds of the litigation are “obscure.”

MGM is a Nevada company, so any lawsuits belong in state court, Eglet said. He viewed the decision to file the complaints in federal court as a “blatant display of judge shopping” that “quite frankly verges on unethical.”

“I’ve never seen a more outrageous thing, where they sue the victims in an effort to find a judge they like,” he said. “It’s just really sad that they would stoop to this level.”

A failing of the corporate mindset is that once lawyers are consulted, their advice is doomed to be followed. PR, your marketing people and your customers could be screaming in your face that what you are going to do is the stupidest thing in the history of free enterprise, a disaster on an untellable scale. But you've paid for the legal advice so by goodness you're gonna follow it!

https://boingboing.net/2018/07/17/mandalay-bay-hotel-owner-sues.html

[mystlnewsonline]

LAS VEGAS | Final records released by police in Las Vegas mass shooting

LAS VEGAS | Final records released by police in Las Vegas mass shooting

LAS VEGAS — Jan 03, 2019—Police in Las Vegas said Thursday they have finished releasing audio, video and written records about the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history 15 months ago during an open-air concert.

The departmentsaid that after 34 releases of material since May, officials believe they have complied with a court order in a public records lawsuit about the Oct. 1, 2017,…

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 10.1

331 BC – Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of Gaugamela. 366 – Pope Damasus I is consecrated. 959 – Edgar the Peaceful becomes king of all England, in succession to Eadwig. 965 – Pope John XIII is consecrated. 1553 – Coronation of Queen Mary I of England. 1588 – Coronation of Shah Abbas I of Persia. 1730 – Ahmed III is forced to abdicate as the Ottoman sultan. 1779 – The city of Tampere, Finland (belonging to Sweden at this time) is founded by King Gustav III of Sweden. 1787 – Russians under Alexander Suvorov defeat the Turks at Kinburn. 1791 – First session of the French Legislative Assembly. 1795 – More than a year after the Battle of Sprimont, the Austrian Netherlands (present-day Belgium) are officially annexed by Revolutionary France. 1800 – Via the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso, Spain cedes Louisiana to France, which would sell the land to the United States thirty months later. 1814 – Opening of the Congress of Vienna, intended to redraw Europe's political map after the defeat of Napoleon the previous spring. 1827 – Russo-Persian War: The Russian army under Ivan Paskevich storms Yerevan, ending a millennium of Muslim domination of Armenia. 1829 – South African College is founded in Cape Town, South Africa. It will later separate into the University of Cape Town and the South African College Schools. 1832 – Texian political delegates convene at San Felipe de Austin to petition for changes in the governance of Mexican Texas. 1861 – Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management is published, going on to sell 60,000 copies in its first year and remaining in print until the present day. 1887 – Balochistan is conquered by the British Empire. 1890 – Yosemite National Park is established by the U.S. Congress. 1891 – Stanford University opens its doors in California, United States. 1898 – The Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration is founded under the name k.u.k. Exportakademie. 1903 – Baseball: The Boston Americans play the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first game of the modern World Series. 1908 – Ford Model T automobiles are offered for sale at a price of US$825. 1910 – A large bomb destroys the Los Angeles Times building, killing 21. 1918 – World War I: The Egyptian Expeditionary Force captures Damascus. 1918 – Sayid Abdullah becomes the last Khan of Khiva. 1928 – The Soviet Union introduces its first five-year plan. 1931 – The George Washington Bridge in the United States, linking New Jersey and New York, is opened. 1931 – Clara Campoamor persuades the Constituent Cortes to enfranchise women in Spain's new constitution. 1936 – Spanish Civil War: Francisco Franco is named head of the Nationalist government of Spain. 1936 – Spanish Civil War: The Central Committee of Antifascist Militias of Catalonia dissolves itself, handing control of Catalan defence militias over to the Generalitat. 1938 – Germany annexes the Sudetenland. 1939 – World War II: After a one-month siege, German troops occupy Warsaw. 1940 – The Pennsylvania Turnpike, often considered the first superhighway in the United States, opens to traffic. 1942 – World War II: USS Grouper torpedoes Lisbon Maru, not knowing that she is carrying British prisoners of war from Hong Kong. 1943 – World War II: After the Four Days of Naples, Allied troops enter the city. 1946 – Nazi leaders are sentenced at the Nuremberg trials. 1946 – The Daegu October Incident occurs in Allied-occupied Korea. 1947 – The North American F-86 Sabre flies for the first time. 1949 – The People's Republic of China is established. 1953 – Andhra State is formed, consisting of a Telugu-speaking area carved out of India's Madras State. 1953 – A Mutual Defense Treaty Between the United States and the Republic of Korea is concluded in Washington, D.C. 1955 – The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is established. 1957 – First appearance of In God we trust on U.S. paper currency. 1958 – The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics is replaced by NASA. 1960 – Nigeria gains independence from the United Kingdom. 1961 – The United States Defense Intelligence Agency is formed, becoming the country's first centralized military intelligence organization. 1961 – East and West Cameroon merge to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon. 1961 – The CTV Television Network, Canada's first private television network, is launched. 1964 – The Free Speech Movement is launched on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. 1964 – Japanese Shinkansen ("bullet trains") begin high-speed rail service from Tokyo to Osaka. 1966 – West Coast Airlines Flight 956 crashes with no survivors in Oregon. This accident marks the first loss of a DC-9. 1968 – Guyana nationalizes the British Guiana Broadcasting Service, which would eventually become part of the National Communications Network, Guyana. 1969 – Concorde breaks the sound barrier for the first time. 1971 – Walt Disney World opens near Orlando, Florida. 1971 – The first practical CT scanner is used to diagnose a patient. 1975 – Muhammad Ali defeats Joe Frazier in a boxing match in Manila, Philippines. 1978 – Tuvalu gains independence from the United Kingdom. 1979 – Pope John Paul II begins his first pastoral visit to the United States. 1979 – The MTR, the rapid transit railway system in Hong Kong, opens. 1982 – Helmut Kohl replaces Helmut Schmidt as Chancellor of Germany through a constructive vote of no confidence. 1982 – Epcot opens at Walt Disney World in Florida. 1982 – Sony and Phillips launch the compact disc in Japan. On the same day, Sony released the model CDP-101 compact disc player, the first player of its kind. 1985 – Israel-Palestinian conflict: Israel attacks the Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunisia during "Operation Wooden Leg". 1987 – The 5.9 Mw  Whittier Narrows earthquake shakes the San Gabriel Valley with a Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe), killing eight and injuring 200. 1989 – Denmark introduces the world's first legal same-sex registered partnerships. 1991 – Croatian War of Independence: The Siege of Dubrovnik begins. 1994 – Palau enters a Compact of Free Association with the United States. 2000 – Israel-Palestinian conflict: Palestinians protest the murder of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah by the Israeli police in northern Israel, beginning the "October 2000 events". 2001 – Militants attack the state legislature building in Kashmir, killing 38. 2009 – The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom takes over the judicial functions of the House of Lords. 2012 – A ferry collision off the coast of Hong Kong kills 38 people and injures 102 others. 2014 – A series of explosions at a gunpowder plant in Bulgaria completely destroys the factory, killing 15 people. 2014 – A double bombing of an elementary school in Homs, Syria kills over 50 people. 2015 – A gunman kills nine people at a community college in Oregon. 2015 – Heavy rains trigger a major landslide in Guatemala, killing 280 people. 2017 – An independence referendum, declared illegal by the Constitutional Court of Spain, takes place in Catalonia. 2017 – Fifty-eight people are killed and 869 others injured in a mass shooting at a country music festival at the Las Vegas Strip in the United States; the gunman, Stephen Paddock, later commits suicide. 2018 – The International Court of Justice rules that Chile is not obliged to negotiate access to the Pacific Ocean with Bolivia.

[frontstreet1]

Girlfriend Of Las Vegas Killer Says He Left Her In The Dark

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LAS VEGAS — The girlfriend of the Las Vegas gunman said Wednesday that she had no inkling of the massacre he was plotting when he sent her on a trip abroad to see her family.

Marilou Danley issued the statement after returning from her native Philippines and being questioned for much of the day by FBI agents still trying to figure out what drove Stephen Paddock to open fire on 22,000 fans at a country music festival from his 32nd-floor hotel suite.

“He never said anything to me or took any action that I was aware of that I understood in any way to be a warning that something horrible like this was going to happen,” Danley said in a statement read by her lawyer outside FBI headquarters in Los Angeles.

Danley, who was overseas for more than two weeks, said she was initially pleased when Paddock wired her money in the Philippines to buy a house for her family. But she later feared it was a way to break up with her.

“It never occurred to me in any way whatsoever that he was planning violence against anyone,” she said.

Danley, 62, who has been called a person of interest by investigators, said she loved Paddock as a “kind, caring, quiet man” and hoped they would have a future together. She said she was devastated by the carnage and would cooperate with authorities as they struggle to get inside Paddock’s mind.

Two sisters of Marilou Danley say Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock sent Danley away so that he could plan the shooting. (Oct. 4)

Investigators are busy reconstructing his life, behavior and the people he encountered in the weeks leading up to the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said. That includes examining his computer and cellphone.

But as of Wednesday, investigators were unable to come up with a motive for the attack Sunday night.

“This individual and this attack didn’t leave the sort of immediately accessible thumbprints that you find on some mass casualty attacks,” McCabe said.

Paddock killed 58 people and wounded more than 500 others before killing himself in his room at the Mandalay Bay hotel casino, authorities said. The Associated Press previously reported that 59 victims were killed, but has received revised information from the Clark County coroner.

The 64-year-old high-stakes gambler and real estate investor specifically requested an upper-floor room with a view of the music festival when he checked in last Thursday, according to a person who has seen hotel records turned over to investigators.

Paddock wasn’t able to move into the room until Saturday, said the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly and disclosed the information to the AP on condition of anonymity.

The room, which goes for $590, was given to Paddock free because he was a good customer who wagered tens of thousands of dollars each time he visited the casino, the person said.

It was just another indication of how methodically he planned the attack. Authorities have said he brought 23 weapons in 10 suitcases into the room and set up cameras inside and out to watch for police closing in on him.

But investigators had little to work with in trying to determine what set him off.

While he had a passion for high-stakes gambling at Nevada casinos, his game of choice was video poker, a relatively solitary pursuit with no dealer and no humans to play against. And while neighbors described Paddock as friendly, he wasn’t close to them.

“He was a private guy. That’s why you can’t find out anything about him,” his brother, Eric Paddock, said from his home in Florida. As for what triggered the massacre, the brother said, “Something happened that drove him into the pit of hell.”

Occasionally, Paddock shared news of his gambling winnings, his brother said, recalling a photo text message he received showing a $40,000 payout.

Casino regulators are looking closely at Paddock’s gambling habits and checking their records to see whether he had any disputes with casinos or fellow patrons. In addition, investigators are examining a dozen financial reports filed in recent weeks when he bought more than $10,000 in casino chips.

It was in a casino where Paddock met his girlfriend, who was a high-limit hostess for Club Paradise at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa in Reno, Eric Paddock told The Washington Post.

Stephen Paddock wired $100,000 to the Philippines days before the shooting, a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly because of the continuing investigation said on condition of anonymity. Investigators are trying to trace that money.

Danley’s sisters in Australia said in a TV interview that they believe Paddock sent her away so she wouldn’t interfere with his murderous plans.

Paddock had no known criminal history. Public records contained no indication of any financial problems, and his brother described him as a wealthy real estate investor.

“I believe, based on what I have been told, the issue was not that he was under financial stress,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee.

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump met privately with victims at a Las Vegas hospital Wednesday and then with police officers and dispatchers, praising them and the doctors who treated the wounded.

“Our souls are stricken with grief for every American who lost a husband or a wife, a mother or a father, a son or a daughter,” he said. “We know that your sorrow feels endless. We stand together to help you carry your pain.”

Paddock had stockpiled 47 guns since 1982 and bought 33 of them, mostly rifles, over the past year alone, right up until three days before the attack, Jill Snyder, an agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told CBS on Wednesday.

By KEN RITTER, MICHAEL BALSAMO and BRIAN MELLEY - Oct 4 6:57 PM EDT

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Melley reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Jim Gomez and Teresa Cerojano in Manila, Philippines; Andrew Dalton in Los Angeles; and Richard Lardner, Eric Tucker, Sadie Gurman and Tami Abdollah in Washington contributed to this report.

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For complete coverage of the Las Vegas shooting, click here: https://apnews.com/tag/LasVegasmassshooting .

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This story has been corrected to show that the death toll is 58, not including the gunman, based on revised information from the Clark County coroner.

[steamedtangerine]

Violent anti-vaxxers, child abusers, white supremacists-now I got an idea what qualifies to work at prominent defense contractor Northrop Grumman:

https://heavy.com/news/2019/07/darryl-varnum/ an anti-vaxxer, gun collector, convinced ISIS was “after him” who recently threatened a Democratic congresswoman Frederica Wilson.

https://heavy.com/news/2018/07/michael-miselis/ a redhat white supremacist who attacked counter-protesters at the Charlottesville rally.

https://heavy.com/news/2018/01/david-turpin-louise-allen-anna-perris-california-children-shackled-parents/ sick child abusers.

It should also be worth mentioned that Varnum also worked for Lockheed Martin, as did Las Vegas mass shooter Stephen Paddock. https://heavy.com/news/2017/10/stephen-paddock-las-vegas-route-91-mandalay-bay-shooting-shooter-gunman-suspect-photos-motive/

[antifainternational]

Remember when Alex Jones tried to claim that the Las Vegas mass murderer Stephen Paddock was antifa?  Yeah, turns out he was actually a conspiracy theorist & right wing extremist exactly like Jones.  Funny that.

[newstfionline]

Las Vegas police end investigation into massacre without determining what motivated the gunman

By Mark Berman, Washington Post, August 3, 2018

Nearly a year after a gunman in Las Vegas carried out the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, police say they have concluded their investigation without being able to determine what motivated the massacre.

The Las Vegas police announced this on Friday, just two months before the first anniversary of the Oct. 1, 2017, attack that killed 58 people and injured hundreds more at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. Officials said Stephen Paddock fired from his 32nd-floor suite at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino for more than 10 minutes before eventually turning one of his guns on himself.

In a 181-page report released Friday, police said that while searching for a possible motivation they scoured the gunman’s financial history, explored his movements and actions leading up to the shooting and spoke with his girlfriend, ex-wife, other relatives and his doctor. After all of that, though, they were still unable to answer the pivotal question that has lingered since the carnage.

“What we have not been able to definitively answer is why Stephen Paddock committed this act,” Sheriff Joe Lombardo said at a news briefing before the report was made public.

Even in a country periodically scarred by shootings in schools, movie theaters, churches and offices, the scale of what happened in Las Vegas remains staggering. Police said that in addition to those killed that night, another 869 people were physically injured, nearly half of them hurt by gunshots or shrapnel. Scores of other people in the crowd of 22,000 are enduring psychological scars after witnessing such devastation.

The report includes details about the gunman’s financial status, noting that an FBI analysis found that the amounts in his 14 bank accounts dropped before the shooting. In September 2015, he had just shy of $2.1 million in his back accounts, a total that declined to $530,000 in September 2017, the report said.

He had paid considerable amounts to casinos and credit card companies and, while his girlfriend was abroad before and during the massacre, wired $150,000 into her account, investigators found. One of his last checks--for more than $13,000--was written to the Internal Revenue Service, where the gunman had worked for a time.

Lombardo called the gunman “an unremarkable man” who left behind only enough information for people to make educated guesses as to what drove him. Investigators found that many people described the 64-year-old “as a narcissist [who] only cared about himself,” the report said. One of the gunman’s brothers said he had mental health issues. His girlfriend said the gunman claimed he was told by doctors he had a chemical imbalance and also complained doctors couldn’t cure him. The report quotes the gunman’s doctor as saying he was “odd,” may have had bipolar disorder and accepted prescriptions for anxiety medication but refused anti-depressants.

[yahoonewsphotos]

Scenes from Las Vegas mass shooting

A gunman perched on the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas casino unleashed a hail of bullets on an outdoor country music festival below, killing at least 50 people as tens of thousands of concertgoers screamed and ran for their lives, officials said Monday. It was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

More than 400 other victims were taken to the hospital, authorities said.

SWAT teams using explosives stormed the gunman's hotel room and found he had killed himself, authorities said. He had as many as 10 guns with him, including rifles, they said.

There was no immediate word on the motive for the bloodbath.

Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said authorities believe it was a "lone wolf" attack. And the U.S. Homeland Security Department said there was no "specific credible threat" involving other public venues in the U.S.

Country music star Jason Aldean was performing Sunday night at the end of the three-day Route 91 Harvest Festival in front of a crowd of more than 22,000 when the gunman opened fire from inside the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino across the street.

The gunman was identified as Stephen Craig Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nevada. He had checked into the hotel room on Thursday, authorities said. (AP)

Photo credits: David Becker/Getty Images (4), John Locher/AP (2), Chase Stevens/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP, Paul Buck/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock, Ronda Churchill/AP,

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