Authorities have revealed the contents of a note Las Vegas mass shooter Stephen Paddock left behind in his Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino hotel.
As CrimeOnline previously reported, investigators found a piece of paper with numbers written on it in the hotel room where Paddock opened fire on thousands of concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest Festival. He killed 58 people and injured almost 500 more. Authorities had previously said that the note was note a manifesto or a suicide note.
CBS News reports that three of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officers who breached Paddock’s hotel room after the roughly 10-minute shooting spree will appear on a 60 Minutes segment Sunday night. The news station published a portion of the interview, in which Officer David Newton explains that the numbers appeared to be calculations about how the gunman could most effectively aim at the crowd.
“I could see on it he had written the distance, the elevation he was on, the drop of what his bullet was gonna be for the crowd,” Newton said. “So he had that written down and figured out so he would know where to shoot to hit his targets from there.”
The officer said the note was found near one of the windows Paddock had smashed open in order to shoot at the concertgoers.
Newton said that the scene in Paddock’s 32nd-floor hotel room was “very erie.”
“Yeah, the dust from the explosive breach. And then you have the flashing lights. And that looked straight, like, out of a movie, you know?”
Nearly a week after the shooting, the deadliest in U.S. history, investigators are still working to determine Paddock’s motive.
[Feature image: Associated Press]