First named victim of Las Vegas shooting, Sonny Melton
A gunman perched high on the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas Strip casino unleashed a shower of bullets down on an outdoor country music festival below, killing at least 50 people and wounding more than 400 as tens of thousands of frantic concert-goers screamed and ran for their lives, officials said Monday. It was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
Country music star Jason Aldean was performing Sunday night at the end of the three-day Route 91 Harvest Festival when the gunman opened fire across the street from inside the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino.
SWAT teams quickly descended on the concert and the casino, and officers used explosives to get into the hotel room where the suspect was inside, authorities said. The gunman was found dead at the scene and was identified by Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo as Stephen Paddock, 64. A motive was not immediately known.
Police said Paddock was found dead with as many as 10 firearms.
Aldean was in the middle of a song when the shots came rapidly: Pop-pop-pop-pop. Video of the shooting then showed Aldean stopping and the crowd getting quiet as if they were unsure of what had just happened. The gunman paused and then fired another volley of muzzle flashes from the gold glass casino as more victims fell to the ground while others fled in panic. Some said they hid behind concession stands and other crawled under parked cars.
Two law enforcement sources told CBS News senior investigative producer Pat Milton that at this point, it doesn't appear the shooting was an act of terrorism. The suspect was known to police in Mesquite and had a criminal history, the sources said.
The U.S. Homeland Security Department says there is no "specific credible threat" involving other public venues in the U.S. after the shooting.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) claimed on Monday that Paddock was acting on behalf of the group, but offered no evidence. The terror group said in a statement released by its pseudo-news agency Amaq, citing anonymous sources, that Paddock converted to Islam several months ago and carried out the attack "in response to calls to target states of the coalition" battling ISIS.
Gail Davis, who was at the Las Vegas outdoor country music concert Sunday night, witnessed the terrifying scene.
"We went there to see Jason Aldean," she said. "We were standing, like, maybe halfway up. He came on and about 20 to 10, he sang about five songs and all of a sudden we heard about three or four little pop, pop, pops, and everybody looked around and said, 'Oh, it's just firecrackers.' And then we heard pop, pop, pop, and it just kept going and going, and my husband said, "That's not firecrackers. That sounds like a semi-automatic rifle.' And then everybody started screaming and started to run.
The first shooting victims have been identified after 59 people were killed when a gunman opened fire at a music festival in Las Vegas on Sunday in what has become the deadliest mass shooting in American history. Sonny Melton, 29, Denise Salmon Burditus, 50, Lisa Romero, Jordan McIldoon, 23, Jessica Klymchuk, 28, Jenny Parks, Susan Smith, 53, and Adrian Murfitt, 35, all lost their lives when 64-year-old Stephen Craig Paddock of nearby Mesquite, Nevada began shooting from his hotel room across the street at the Mandalay Bay Casino.
John Phippen, Rhonda LeRocque, Dana Gardner, Quinton Robbins, 20, Bailey Schweitzer, Angie Gomez, and Carrie Barnette were killed in the mass shooting.
