The gunman who kept an arsenal of deadly firearms in his Las Vegas hotel suite before committing the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history had numerous interactions with staff at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino before he gunned down 58 people attending an outdoor concert on October 1.
A spokesperson for MGM Resorts, which operates the Mandalay Bay, confirmed to the Las Vegas Review-Journal that Paddock had interacted with several staffers all the way up to the day of the massacre, and that some had entered his room. The spokesperson indicated that all of these interactions were routine.
“There were numerous interactions with Stephen Paddock every day at the resort, including a room service delivery and a call with housekeeping on October 1, all of which were normal in nature,” the spokesperson said in an email to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
“Mandalay Bay staff, room service and housekeeping had contact with Paddock or entered his suite more than 10 times over the course of his stay, including the three days leading up to October 1.”
MGM Resorts has not made any of the hotel staff members available for interviews outside of security guard Jesus Campos and building engineer Stephen Shuck, who were both in the immediate vicinity of Paddock’s room on the night of the shooting and are credited with preventing even further casualties. They appeared together on the The Ellen DeGeneres Show in November, which MGM Resorts said would be Campos’s only media appearance.
Presumably, none of the staffers who interacted with Paddock reported noticing the firearms or any unusual behavior.
“As a result of these interactions, there was no need to conduct a welfare check,” read the MGM statement to the newspaper.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal report notes that the MGM Resorts spokesperson declined to provide details of Paddock’s interactions with staffers.
[Feature image: Associated Press]