Over 50 dead, 400 injured in Las Vegas shooting, Deadliest in US history

More than 50 people were killed and 400 injured when a lone gunman opened fire from a perch high up in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas Sunday night, police said, making it the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history.

The "nonstop gunfire," according to one witness, sent bystanders outside the resort on the Vegas strip ducking for cover and scrambling for their lives.

Bystanders sprang into action, caring for the wounded and at least one described someone dying in their arms.
Police said a Las Vegas police officer who was off-duty attending the concert is among the dead.

One video showed the terrifying aftermath as the injured lay on stretchers or on the ground with responders and bystanders surrounding them to give aid. Bystanders made makeshift stretchers out of police barricades, plugged wounds with their hands and used their clothing to try to stanch the bleeding from the wounded.

The death toll, which police emphasized was preliminary and tentative, would make the attack the deadliest mass shooting in US history, eclipsing last year's massacre of 49 people at an Orlando night club.

Thousands of panicked people fled the scene, in some cases trampling one another as law enforcement officers scrambled to locate and kill the gunman. Shocked concertgoers, some with blood on their clothes, wandered the streets after the attack.

The suspect was a local Las Vegas man who acted alone and was not believed to be connected to any militant group, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters.

The gunman has been identified by the police as Stephen Paddock. The shooter's 62-year-old companion, an Asian-American woman identified as Marilou Danley, has been located, the police added.

"We have no idea what his belief system was," Lombardo said. "Right now, we believe he was the sole aggressor and the scene is static."

Police had located two cars that belonged to Paddock.They said that rumors of other shootings in the area were false.

Las Vegas's casinos, nightclubs and shopping draw some 3.5 million visitors from around the world each year and the area was packed with visitors when the shooting broke out shortly after 10 p.m. (0400 GMT).

Witnesses on social media said the shooting broke out on the last night of the three-day Route 91 Harvest festival, a sold-out event attended by thousands and featuring top acts such as Eric Church, Sam Hunt and Jason Aldean.

The spokeswoman for the University Medical Center hospital said 14 of the wounded were in a critical condition. All had suffered gunshot wounds, she said.

US media, including Fox News, reported that Aldean was performing around 10:45 p.m. local time on Sunday when the rampage began but that he had been bundled safely off stage at the event outside the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in the Nevada gambling mecca. CNN reported all the artists were safe.

Lombardo said the gunfire came from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay, where the gunman was killed.

The gunman, who was a local man, was killed after police "engaged the suspect," Lombardo told reporters.

Police said on Twitter that at this time they did not believe there are any more shooters.

- Asian Tribune -