The Las Vegas police department has issued its final report on the October 2017 mass shooting that left dozens dead and hundreds injured, and they say they still don’t know why the shooter took aim at the Route 91 country music festival.
The Las Vegas Review Journal reports that the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department released their final report on the incident Friday, but that despite hours of interviews and a national investigation, law enforcement never determined the shooter’s motive.
“What we have been able to answer are the questions of who, what, when, where and how,” Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo told media on Friday. “What we have not been able to definitively answer is the ‘why’ [the shooter] committed this act.”
The shooter, a middle-aged white man and former real estate developer, reportedly turned his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino into an arsenal, packing the “panoramic suite” with guns and ammunition, and wiring cameras in the hallway outside his suite to watch hotel guests and employees as they passed his door. He fitted his rifles with “bump stocks” allowing them to fire as if they were automatic, and made detailed plans on how to inflict maximum damage on the crowd below on hotel notepads.
He opened fire on a crowd of country music fans just after 10 p.m. on October 1, 2017. According to the final tally, 869 people received “documented injuries” relating to the shooting, “including 413 wounded by bullets or shrapnel. Thirty-one people died at the scene, and another 27 were pronounced dead at area hospitals.”
The Review-Journal says that investigators traced the trajectory of every bullet fired, including bullets fired down the hallway at a Mandalay Bay security guard who had the misfortune of happening on the shooter’s operation just as he was preparing to begin his massacre.
As best as investigators could tell, the shooter suffered from a “diminished mental state,” but did not leave a note nor a manifesto, and had no strong political or religious beliefs — motives common among mass shooters and other domestic terrorists. One doctor interviewed by law enforcement said he prescribed the shooter anti-anxiety medication and suggested he may have been bi-polar, but did not follow up.
Sheriffs did find what the Review-Journal calls “indicators of intent,” and evidence that the shooter had planned other possible locations for his massacre, including the Vegas “Life is Beautiful” fest, and Chicago’s “Lollapalooza.” He also researched attendance numbers for the Route 91 music festival, looking to determine possible carnage.
The FBI has also prepared a report which is expected out in the coming months.
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