Law-enforcement officials confirmed that the gunman in Sunday’s mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip had set up cameras in and outside of the hotel room, possibly to look “for anybody coming to take him into custody,” Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters on Tuesday afternoon.
Two cameras were placed in the hallway outside Stephen Paddock’s room, with at least one of them set up on a food-service cart to monitor activity, police said.
“I anticipate he was looking for anybody coming to take him into custody,” Lombardo said earlier in the day. “It was pre-planned, extensively, and I’m pretty sure that he evaluated everything that he did in his actions, which is troublesome.”
An additional camera was placed in the peephole of Paddock’s room door, Clark County Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said at a Tuesday evening press conference.
When law-enforcement officers managed to find Paddock in the hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, he was already dead in what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Armed with dozens of guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition he purchased legally, Paddock killed at least 59 people who were among some 22,000 people attending a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. More than 500 people were injured.
