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At Least 59 Dead, 527 Injured in Las Vegas Massacre; Tom Petty dies at 66. Aired 12-1a ET
Aired October 03, 2017 - 00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[00:00:00] JIM CLEMENTE, FORMER FBI PROFILER: But when you're under extreme stress your controls typically drop away. So things that you might not normally do you would act out and do and that could be the case in this situation.
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Jim, James -- all right. Thank you very much, gentlemen. I appreciate it.
It is the top of the hour now.
Our breaking news: the worst massacre in modern American history.
I'm Don Lemon live in Las Vegas. Thank you so much for joining us.
At least 59 people killed, 527 injured -- all by one man. Stephen Paddock turned his Las Vegas hotel room at the Mandalay Bay right behind me into an arsenal, opening fire on a country music concert right across the street.
Police tonight saying they found 23 guns in that hotel room, another 19 guns found at Paddock's Mesquite, Nevada home.
There's a whole lot to get to tonight, but earlier I spoke with a survivor of last night's mass shooting. Her name is Heather Gooze. I want you to hear it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LEMON: What happened? When did you realize something was wrong?
HEATHER GOOZE, SHOOTING SURVIVOR: I was a bartender at Route 91. I was in one of the main bars called the House of Blues Bar. Business as usual, having a good time. The main act had started so we were a little bit slower. Had a couple of like regulars that just wanted to hang out.
I was literally running a credit card from a guy for his buds when you just hear screams. It felt like thousands of people running through the door of the bar and pushing their way out the back doors of the bar that went into the VIP area.
As people started pushing through the door and the music had stopped and all you heard was the screams, you heard the second round of the shots. You heard the -- there was like those little white firecrackers you throw on the ground and pop but amplified by 20 percent. I mean it did. It sounded like fireworks.
LEMON: Did you see anyone falling around you? Or did you see --
GOOZE: Not at that point because we were inside of the bar.
LEMON: And when did you realize you had to go.
GOOZE: Almost immediately. I mean, as people were running out you're kind of like looking and then they're like there's a shooter, there's a shooter. I mean it was -- and at this point it was hours before we knew, of course, that he was over at Mandalay Bay.
At this point everybody thought that he was there at the festival, so who knew where he was going to go, who he was going after, what he was shooting -- nobody knew.
All of this was maybe in the course of like a five, ten minute period. But there was --
LEMON: So he would shoot, pause, and then shoot again.
GOOZE: Shoot again. And it was -- I mean it wasn't --
LEMON: Right.
GOOZE: It was, it was -- and it sounded like fireworks.
LEMON: And then he would stop for a while.
GOOZE: A couple seconds, a couple minutes -- I don't know. I have no concept of time.
LEMON: And then start again.
GOOZE: And then start again.
And then at one point everyone was like -- there was somebody under there who is kind of freaking out. Everybody else was like shush because you don't know -- you don't know if this guy is standing in the doorway right now.
You have no concept of what's going on, where this guy is or people are. You don't know. You know, you have people running, screaming past.
I looked out and there was a guy standing over a girl that was like slumped down and there was just blood everywhere. And that's when we said we need to get out of here. We need to get out of here. Everybody climbed out.
I don't know why I didn't go. I don't know why I didn't go. I walked back into the bar. There was a lady leaning up against the wall. She had blood down her leg.
I said oh, my God, did you fall? Did you cut yourself because at this point there's bottles all over the floor. There's, you know, cans, there's phones, there's purses, there's clothes. She said, I don't know, my leg hurts.
And I looked down and there's two little holes right in the front of her leg and I was like oh, my God, you got shot. Like this is legit. Like this is my first time up close seeing like a guy was coming through the bar, I grabbed him I said you need to grab her. You need to get her out of here.
Right as they were going out, this guy came in through the front of the bar and he was literally dragging a guy across the floor.
LEMON: He wasn't responding.
GOOZE: He was. He had gotten shot in the thigh and fell and broke his leg. The girlfriend was freaking out, understandably. We pulled him through the bar out the door. Again, at this point we have no idea if this guy is still on premises or not.
You know, you hear the stories and you think, ok, he's going to come into this room next or he's going to go here. We have no idea and a lot of people were being directed towards us because we were on the backside away from Las Vegas Boulevard. So we didn't know if he was going to follow the crowd that was coming our way.
So we got him in the back. I said ok, we're going to -- stay here, like don't keep moving him. I said I'm going to go over to the medical tent. It's only like -- it's literally not too many feet away from us.
[00:04:57] Ran over there. It was like what you see in the movies. There was bodies off to the side. This little paramedics tent, I mean, these guys were unbelievable.
I mean, this is a matter of 20 to 25 minutes and they had people already hooked up to oxygen. There was IVs. Every available space, there was off duty people that were at the concert helping. It was a full on triage set up there.
LEMON: When did you come in contact with Jordan?
GOOZE: So a little bit later after everything had been going on for a little while, I had walked out the back gate and it started with a guy named Chris. They were -- there was a bunch of guys coming out of the back fence area and they were holding one of the barricade gates.
And they yelled me over and they said we need your help, like we need you to hold this jacket on the back of this guy's head. He's been shot in the back of the head. I said ok.
And I'm standing there and I'm holding it and you could -- the blood is dripping down and you can literally feel the hole in the back of his head. And they said his name is Chris. That's all we know. We all basically pushed Chris into there while I've got my hand here.
LEMON: Into someone's car.
GOOZE: Into someone's back seat of their car while they're putting somebody in the front seat and another person in the back seat and they're like you need to hold his head and my hand was like on his shoulder.
And I don't know. I don't think that he made it because I could feel -- like his chest wasn't moving anymore. And then right as like he's going, here comes three guys holding a maintenance ladder with a guy on it.
People were just grabbing anything they could to help carry bodies. And they said we need help, we need help. Grab the corner. I said ok. I grabbed the corner of the ladder and I had my hand on the guy's arm. And we carried him over probably feet from where we had Chris, you know, so blood on the ground.
As those guys were walking back in, like I could see their backs I felt his fingers kind of tighten and then just kind of loosen. And I was there for about an hour, and his phone rang and we answered his phone. I answered his phone. It was a friend of his.
You know, he said I was calling. I heard on the news there was a shooting. I knew my friend -- my friend is there. You're answering his phone. Is he there? I said yes. Is he hurt and I said he's -- he's dead.
And, you know, obviously the reaction that you're going to get. I said you need to find his family. He's there with his girlfriend. He gave us his girlfriend's name.
I said you need to try to contact his family. His phone is off. We can't get into anything.
LEMON: How did the friend react?
GOOZE: You can imagine. I mean, here is a complete stranger telling you the person that you're calling to make sure is safe isn't safe. You know, it was a very quick call. He was, you know -- we just -- we wanted to know who this guy was. None of us knew who he was.
LEMON: And the girlfriend?
GOOZE: She said he was the love of her life. I found out today from people, like from Facebook posts that he saved her life. That she got out because whatever he did ended up with a bullet like he saved her life.
But she said she goes are you sure like the first thing was, you know, I said I'm with Jordan. We took a picture of his I.D. and texted it to her.
And I said is this your boyfriend? And she said yes. And she said is he ok and I said no. She said is he hurt? And I said yes. And she said be honest with me. Tell me. And I said he's not breathing. I said he's dead.
And she said are you sure? Like check his breathing. Check him. Are you sure? And I said I've already been with him for an hour. And you can imagine she's with complete strangers in a lockdown two blocks away and here is a complete stranger saying the love of your life --
LEMON: You felt the -- you were with him until the end of his life. You felt him let go of your hand.
GOOZE: Yes.
LEMON: How are you still standing?
GOOZE: Because I'm not hurt. I'm not at the hospital. I'm not dead. I'm not the family members of somebody. I have friends that are in the hospital. We still have people that we have not found.
But I'm not the one that was running in there when we thought the gunman was still on the ground getting people out of there. All we did was sit with somebody so that he wasn't alone. I would hope that somebody would have done that with me.
LEMON: Are you ok?
GOOZE: I'm ok. I'm not hurt.
LEMON: Are you ok?
[00:09:58] GOOZE: My sister said there's a reason why I was there. My sister said I was supposed to be at that place at the time.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LEMON: An emotional story from Heather Gooze about survivors and the heroes who helped them.
Now I want to bring in Paul Nguyen. He stayed behind at the scene of last night's massacre to help other concert goers, to help them escape. And he joins me now.
Thank you so much. How are you doing tonight?
PAUL NGUYEN, SHOOTING SURVIVOR: Good -- just kind of still trying to process everything.
LEMON: Yes. Why did you stay behind?
NGUYEN: I still had friends that were unaccounted for. As I was trying to escape, you know, we were -- as I was trying to escape, you know, I was trying to text or call anybody. I was making sure -- I had gotten separated from my group.
So, you know, as I was leaving I just -- I felt like I had gotten somewhere safe and helped as many people I could become safe and everything like, you know, I turned around and said I need to go make sure everybody else is safe. And I started getting text messages of people still inside.
LEMON: Did you immediately realize something had gone wrong?
NGUYEN: I heard the first shot. At first I thought it was a firecracker or some sort of pyrotechnic for the show, but after I heard a second shot and a third, and fourth, fifth shot, I knew right away that it was -- those were gunshots.
LEMON: Yes.
NGUYEN: People had paused and just as people had paused and the show was still going on, people started running and that's when the machine gunfire started.
So I was standing luckily near a food truck, so I grabbed my friends that were with me at the time and anybody else and told them just to get cover behind the food truck and just encouraged as many people to come behind here and just stay put, literally just stay put. And then just wait until there was a pause in the shooting.
And as soon as there was a pause I pretty much told everybody we're going to just jump this fence and go behind this police truck that was right behind it and then just hunker down there and then just -- and I lost some people coming over the fence and then -- but there was 20 or 30 more people behind this police car scared and just didn't know what to do.
So there was one woman who was super scared. She was pregnant and she was just hanging on me like, you know, I'm pregnant, please help me. And you know, I just -- I told anybody who was in the area, I said everybody calm down, just relax, stay here, stay down, wait until the -- wait until the shooting had stopped thinking that , you know, he had to reload and once there was a pause I told them to make a break for it to the next trailer behind the lot. And then that happened, I just told everybody to go.
LEMON: So you worked in intervals. You waited for the --
NGUYEN: Yes.
LEMON: -- for it to stop but you still didn't know -- did you know where it was coming from?
NGUYEN: No. I mean the first shot I heard it came from the direction of Mandalay Bay so I looked immediately over across the festival grounds because I was on the east side of the festival and I wasn't sure.
By the time I got behind the police car somebody had said there were multiple shooters that were inside the festival ground and they were getting closer. I did hear bullets start coming our way. I mean behind the cop car I was getting hit three or four times so I knew that we were going to have to make a move soon but we really had to try to wait it out.
LEMON: Hitting the ground or hitting the car.
NGUYEN: It sounded like it was hitting the car. I was on the other side of the car. It sounded like three or four bullets were hitting the car. And people were just -- you know, I told people just to stay put for now. I was like, look, we're going to go soon. Everybody stay put and then he's going to pause.
LEMON: Some people said as they looked up when they heard the gunshots -- as they looked up, they saw like a very bright TV flickering in Mandalay Bay. Did you see that?
NGUYEN: I saw that.
LEMON: Where the gunshots were?
NGUYEN: I saw that. It looked like a flickering light, but I wasn't sure. I mean, to be fair, we were in the direct line of fire, so I wasn't interested in like where it was coming from. I just wanted to get away from it.
LEMON: Any of the people you were with injured, like the pregnant woman?
NGUYEN: She made it fine. Once we got to the private airport hangar, we got out to the tarmac. We were able to flag down airport security. He had an SUV and then a bunch of other people.
I turned around and asked if anybody was shot or anybody was injured. This one woman said her husband was shot, so I immediately went over to them and grabbed him. He was shot in the shoulder. And then another woman approached me and said she was shot in the stomach and then another woman was shot in the thigh, another girl was shot in the leg.
And I basically I was like -- we got them into the car, the security guard was definitely like overwhelmed. So I told him, listen, we have four people that are shot. They need medical attention. You need to put them in your car right now and take off and get them to safety.
[00:14:53] And, you know, he finally -- he processed everything that was going on. We got them in the cars and then they took off and that was the last time I saw them.
LEMON: You have friends who were injured, right.
NGUYEN: I have a couple, yes.
LEMON: How are they doing?
NGUYEN: One is in stable condition now. He's still in the ICU, but he -- they removed the bullet from his back. And then I have another friend who got shot in the lower back and he's in surgery now.
LEMON: Thank you -- Paul.
NGUYEN: You're welcome.
LEMON: Glad your friends are ok.
NGUYEN: Thank you.
LEMON: Appreciate it. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: Unfortunately we have some more breaking news to tell you tonight. The death of a rock and roll icon -- Tom Petty died tonight at the age of 66 after suffering cardiac arrest at his home in Malibu earlier today. The long-time manager of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers confirming his death just a few minutes ago.
CNN's Stephanie Elam has more now.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(MUSIC)
STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Tom Petty's music embodied the essence of rock and roll -- freedom, truth and rebellion. With a career that spanned more than half a century Petty was hailed by some as a musical poet.
TOM PETTY, MUSICIAN: Music as far as I've seen in the world so far is the only real magic that I know. It's just something really honest and clean and pure and it touches you in your heart.
[00:20:02] ELAM: Petty grew up in Gainesville, Florida during the 1950s. He met The King, Elvis Presley, on a movie set when he was just 11 years old. That was the moment, Petty says, his life was forever changed and he became hooked on rock and roll.
By 1974 Petty's Gainesville band, Mudcrutch, was California-bound. The country rock quintet landed a record deal in L.A. Mudcrutch disbanded a short time later and in 1975 Petty formed a new band that included two other Mudcrutch originals.
PETTY: I really think I'm in one of the best rock and roll bands in the world.
ELAM: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers became pioneers of the heartland rock movement. Their straight forward rock and roll sound and unpretentious lyrics generated a string of hits and catapulted the band into international fame.
"Break Down".
(MUSIC)
ELAM: "Don't Do Me Like That".
(MUSIC)
ELAM: "Refugee".
(MUSIC)
ELAM: And "The Waiting".
(MUSIC)
ELAM: Later as a solo act Petty's southern influence sound brought a new wave of success -- "Free Falling".
(MUSIC)
ELAM: "I Won't Back Down".
(MUSIC)
ELAM: And "You Don't Know How It Feels".
(MUSIC)
ELAM: In 1985 Petty's quirky persona found a new outlet, music television. He played the Mad Hatter in "Don't Come Around Here No More". And years later, a mortician in "Mary Jane's Last Dance".
By some accounts the same uncompromising spirit that made Petty a musical craftsman also fueled his notorious legal clashes with his record labels over the rights to his songs and the price of his albums. And he declared bankruptcy in 1979 to get out of a bad record deal and launched a lawsuit tour to pay for the legal fees.
Petty's music legacy includes more than 25 albums and countless awards, including three Grammys. In 2002 Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers were inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame. Petty's prolific (ph) journey was immortalized in the four-hour documentary "Running Down a Dream" in 2007.
PETTY: People often stop me and say, hey, thanks, you've been the sound track of my life. What more can you ask for than for those songs to touch somebody that way? It's just beautiful.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LEMON: Of course, the news is coming in -- Tom Petty dead at the age of 66.
When we come back, we're going to have much more from here in Las Vegas. The stories of survivors and heroes who helped them escape the shooting.
[00:23:14] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: Don Lemon here live in Las Vegas -- the scene of the worst massacre in modern American history.
The killer Stephen Paddock killing at least 59 people, wounding 527 with a hail of bullets from his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay right behind me.
CNN's Tom Foreman has more on why the attack killed so many people -- Tom. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Don -- all you have to do is look at the map to understand why this attack was so deadly. There is Las Vegas strip running through the middle of things -- this area where the festival was is right over here. And the window from which this man was shooting at the Mandalay Bay, you can see right up in here.
From this vantage point he really had an over arching view of the entire area of this concert. Yes, it was about 400 yards away, but he was able to take advantage of certain things that made this extremely dangerous.
For example, instead of trying to place shots, it seemed as if he was simply sweeping the ground with this very rapid fire. With people packed densely together like this, that was a way that he could hit an awful lot of people even if he wasn't aiming that well.
Secondly, there were exits here from which people could leave, but many eyewitnesses say people tried to head back out toward the boulevard because that's where they came in along those gates, you can see on the left there. That led them actually closer to the gunman, not further away.
And lastly, a lot of people because they didn't know where the gunfire was coming from, simply hunkered down in the middle of that space trying to tend to the wounded, and that left them completely under the guns of this man up here. And he was prepared for the attack.
Authorities say when they finally managed to get into the room where he was already dead, having killed himself they believe, he had thousands of rounds of ammunition between there and his home.
They say that he had 35 guns total -- 17 at the hotel that he apparently brought in, in ten suitcases over a period of days. He had scopes for some of the rifles. He also had a hammer that he used to smash out two of the windows. And in his car he had ammonium nitrate which could have been used to fashion a bomb if that's what he had in mind.
Bottom line, a lot of preparation for an attack here and that's another reason it was so deadly -- Don.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LEMON: Thank you -- Tom. Appreciate that.
And the number of guns now up to 42 -- a little bit more than when Tom taped that for us just before the show.
Now I want to bring in Cory Anne Langdon. She is a Las Vegas cab driver who helped panicked concert goers escape in her taxi. Let's watch some of it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Broken leg. Broken leg. Drive. Drive. Broken leg.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right. Ok. Ok.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Broken leg.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Broken leg.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ok. What happened?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's go.
[00:29:59] Is there somebody out there? All right.
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gun. That's what happened.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Go. Go.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. All right. Oh, God, there is an active shooter. OK.
Are you kidding me?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. Go. Go. Go.
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Unbelievable. She's telling you so many people are dead.
You didn't know, right?
CORIANNE LANGDON, CAB DRIVER: No, I didn't know. I had -- it was unbelievable to me.
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: Where were you when the gunfire started?
LANGDON: I was actually staging at the Mandalay Bay in my taxi cab and it was very quiet. And we first -- I first heard a couple of pops and I just thought it was fireworks or firecrackers coming from across the street at the venue, the harvest festival venue.
And after a while, then you started hearing a lot more and that's when I decided to turn my video camera on and my cell phone. And then it just continued to keep going and going and going.
And -- but nobody was doing anything at the Mandalay Bay. Everybody was just kind of standing there. The taxis in front of me, were -- they weren't doing much of anything. And they -- you know, nobody was doing anything. I decided to get out and go check it out and the doorman wasn't doing
anything. And then my fellow taxi drivers, on our dispatch radio, started saying, hey, they're shooting at the Mandalay Bay. Everybody get out of there.
And I looked at the Mandalay Bay and I looked at the Bally (ph) and there wasn't anything going on. Everybody was just kind of walking around, doing whatever.
LEMON: It was happening above you.
LANGDON: Yes, it was. And I could tell that -- it sounded like automatic gunfire. I don't know that much about guns but it sounded weird. And so I got out of line and I went around and I came back around and I looked up.
And I could see the gunfire and the shots. Again, I don't know much -- it just looked like the lights going off.
(CROSSTALK)
LANGDON: Yes, I guess.
LEMON: So then when you came around, and where -- did you pick up people between the hotel and --
LANGDON: No, actually, no. I got out of there and I came back down and I went around across Las Vegas Boulevard, over by where the entrance and exit of the harvest festival was. I knew something was going on because then that's when I saw all the cops there.
I drove by and there were cop cars and cops on the ground with their rifles and everything. And as I came around, all these people -- some people were just walking, though. It was crazy.
And then I looked over and there was people climbing over the fence and people started screaming and running.
And then two people came up to my car and said, "She's got a broken leg," and I said, "OK, get in."
And I don't know, me being the consummate taxi driver I turned on the meter and said, OK, where are we going?
And we -- they said "Go, go, go. Just go, go. There's an active shooter. There's people dead everywhere."
And then suddenly all these other people started trying to get into my cab and I think I had at least like five or six people in my car.
And so I said, OK, nobody else, nobody else. There were still people trying to get in. I feel so bad. There was one guy in front of my cab, he was going, please, please -- and I didn't want to -- I couldn't take anybody else.
LEMON: Where did you take them all? LANGDON: I took them -- they wanted to go back to the Luxor, New York New York and, I said, no, I'm not going to take you that way. I'm going to take you away from the Strip.
And they were screaming. They said they were covered in blood and they said that there was people laying on the ground dead and the active shooter and, you know, and the lady behind me, one of the ladies said, oh, my God, the guy behind me was shot dead and it was just so surreal. It was like the "Twilight Zone" for me.
I was in denial that this could actually be happening in my town, my beautiful city.
LEMON: People think taxi drivers, you see everything. Especially nothing every -- you put -- six years you've been out here.
LANGDON: Yes. Six and a half, yes.
LEMON: Nothing like this.
LANGDON: No, nothing like this. And I feel so bad for the families and the victims and it's just so sad. And so awful.
And I -- you know, the heroes are the people that -- the first responders and the cops and the EMTs and ambulance drivers and then the doctors and nurses at the hospital, and then the people that were on the ground, covering their loved ones.
LEMON: You said you're not a hero.
LANGDON: No.
LEMON: You told me off air don't call you a hero.
LANGDON: No.
LEMON: Because the first responders are the heroes.
LANGDON: Yes, yes, definitely, yes. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and I had a video camera with me and I think that's why I'm here, so...
LEMON: How do people get through this?
How do you get in a crowd and feel safe ever again?
LANGDON: You know, I guess I'm just -- I'm not going to let the terrorists win. I'm not going to be afraid and I don't think that we should be afraid, because then they do win.
I'm going to go on with my life. I have a story to tell now --
[00:35:00]
LANGDON: -- and I think we need to grieve and feel terrible but still live our lives and don't live in fear and don't be afraid to go to a concert.
You know, they have this wonderful concert here every year and it's just a tragedy what happened. But go out and live your life.
Thank you.
LEMON: Thank you. Appreciate it.
LANGDON: Sure.
LEMON: Did a good thing. Thank you so much.
At least 59 people lost their lives and last night here in Las Vegas in this shooting. We're learning more about them tonight.
Twenty-year-old Angela Gomez is being called a fun-loving, sweet young lady with a great sense of humor. That's according to her high school English teacher and her cheer coach in Riverside, California.
Lisa Romero-Muniz from Gallup, New Mexico, also died in the shooting. She was a secretary for her local school district.
Twenty-year-old Bailey Schweitzer from Bakersfield, California, was at last night's concert, watching some of her favorite bands. She also lost her life in the shooting.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(SPORTS)
[00:40:00]
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: The Las Vegas massacre now the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. CNN's chief national security correspondent, Jim Sciutto, looks at how police responded to the attack.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF U.S. SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Just after 10:00 pm Las Vegas time, the shooter unloads a barrage of bullets.
And at 10:08 pm, the first 9-1-1 calls come into police.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At 10:00 pm last night when we started receiving calls of an active shooter at Route 91, harvest festival located adjacent to the Mandalay Bay resort.
SCIUTTO (voice-over): The target, a huge outdoor crowd of some 22,000 people at a country music concert. But police don't know right away where the shots are coming from.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have multiple casualties. GSW to the medical tent, multiple casualties. SCIUTTO (voice-over): On the scene, first responders begin to realize that the shots are raining down on the crowd from an elevated position.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's coming out a window.
SCIUTTO (voice-over): Soon their attention focuses on the Mandalay Bay hotel several hundred feet away and several stories up.
Police enter the hotel and work their way to the upper floors. Joe Fryer (ph) of NBC News is a guest in the hotel and witnesses police going door to door, searching for the shooter.
Tracking the explosive bursts of gunfire, police soon determine that the shots are coming from the 32nd floor.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm inside the Mandalay Bay on the 31st floor. I can hear the automatic fire coming from one floor ahead, one floor above us.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Be advised it is automatic fire, fully automatic fire, from an elevated position. Take cover.
SCIUTTO (voice-over): The shooter firing through two windows that he smashed open with a device similar to a hammer. A team of six police officers close in on his location and the suspect engages them, shooting one officer.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Once we arrived up there, we had isolated this individual to the two rooms and then our SWAT team used the explosive breaching to go in and confront the individual.
SCIUTTO (voice-over): Once they have the order, they go in. It is one hour and 12 minutes after those first 9-1-1 calls.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have sight on the suspect's door. I need for everybody in that hallway to be aware of it and get back. We need to pop this and see if we get any type of response from this guy, see if he's in here or if he's actually moved out somewhere else.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All units on the 32nd floor, SWAT has explosive breach. Everyone in the hall needs to move back. All units move back.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Breach, breach, breach.
SCIUTTO (voice-over): Inside, police find the shooter dead...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's one down, 32nd floor, Mandalay Bay.
SCIUTTO (voice-over): -- apparently the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We believe the individual killed himself prior to our entry.
SCIUTTO (voice-over): The music concert had extensive security.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We just need to get people over to the hospital. OK?
SCIUTTO (voice-over): But this was a threat that police had not prepared for.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These folks were attacked by a man from 32 stories up with automatic rifle fire. And so I don't really know how you plan for that. They just didn't see it coming.
SCIUTTO (voice-over): Jim Sciutto, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LEMON: When we come back, 42 guns recovered from the shooter Stephen Paddock's home and from his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay. We're going to have the latest on what investigators have learned tonight.
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[00:45:00]
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LEMON: We're back now with our breaking news. Police recovered 23 guns from the Las Vegas hotel room of mass shooter, Stephen Paddock. They found 19 more guns at his home.
I want to bring in now CNN law enforcement analyst Art Roderick, national security analyst Juliette Kayyem and law enforcement analyst Cedric Alexander, the author of "The New Guardians."
Good evening to all of you.
Juliette, you first.
Where do you think the investigators are focusing their efforts right now?
JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: There are going to be two areas of inquiry right now. One is going to be accomplices, which is an open question. Actually, everything about this case is open right now.
We have who helped him buy the guns, who helped him potentially modify them. That's a story line out there, that they went from semiautomatic to automatic.
What about this wife or girlfriend who goes missing?
So that's the first piece. The second piece is obviously the one that we focus a lot on, one is just motive. I mean, I'm hearing the family members, others who knew him. Nothing is making sense to me still and we're 24 hours out. We don't know if there was social media presence; we don't know if
there was letters in the home. But right now motive is important. It's just not -- just to be able to say that there's closure, some understanding. We may never get to that aha moment of understanding why someone does this.
But it's certainly relevant for any case that may be brought or certainly understanding what brought him to this moment.
LEMON: You know, Art, it seems clear to you that a lot of planning went into this attack.
How likely is it that none of his friends, none of his neighbors, his family members, that they didn't notice any planning of this?
I mean, he had a girlfriend, a roommate?
ART RODERICK, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: I think the girlfriend is going to be key here. Obviously she's living in the house with him and the amount of weapons this individual had and ammunition and possible explosives, I mean, she's got to know something is going on here.
Now he seemed to be a bit of a loner; so, for him or the neighbors not to observe anything is not really key here. I think really the girlfriend, who was in his presence and living with him in that house is going to be the key. And my understanding is she's flying back from Tokyo voluntarily to be interviewed.
[00:50:00]
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: Well, so it's just not something you believe he just thought up over a day or so.
RODERICK: Yes. There was way too much planning involved in this. I mean, the weapons that he took with him, if I was going to do this, I would do exactly what he would do.
And that's related to my background as being a -- I was a counter sniper in the U.S. Marshals for a few years in my younger days. And that -- those weapons that he had is exactly what I would -- what I carried, a .308 caliber rifle and a .223 for close in -- more close-in stuff.
So he knew what he was doing. He knew what the plan was. And probably there's video of him, standing in that venue, looking up at Mandalay Bay and trying to pick out which floor and which room is the best for me to take.
LEMON: And they're going through the video, I'm sure now.
RODERICK: They're going through it now.
LEMON: Cedric, I want to bring you in because, in broad strokes, the gunman fits a similar profile to the shooter in the attack on the congressional baseball practice that led to Steve Scalise being shot. Both were while males in their 60s, no outward indication that they were contemplating something like this.
Are we looking at a new profile, you think, for mass shooters?
CEDRIC ALEXANDER, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, I think at this point, Don, we don't really know what we're looking at. I think until there has been more of an internal and external investigation into who he is, who his relationship was with, if any at all, what was his political beliefs?
Did he have some ideologies that we're not aware about?
But clearly, here is someone, without question, had some type of mental health break that would put him in a position where he did that much destruction. But he was very planful (sic), just as you heard your other guests say.
And he had to plan this out. So this was not something done on a whim. But I think over the next few days, we'll learn a lot more about what may have been his motivation behind this shooting.
But something happened here. There is something here that is yet to be disclosed as to why this took place.
LEMON: Juliette, what do you make of the shooter's brother's assertion that Paddock was a wealthy man without any extremist affiliations?
Do you buy that?
KAYYEM: It's not a matter of buying it or not buying it. I mean, family members create a mythology about their own family members. It's very hard for them to admit. I don't know how much the brothers were in contact. I don't know the extent of their contact, how close they were, how friendly they were.
I'd want to verify this narrative that he was quite wealthy, although I will say his home looked pretty nice, and verified that he had no ideological or political leanings, which would then get to the motivation case.
We've learned through all of these cases, the father, you know, is always sort of in denial; the brother potentially -- it's understandable but it's why family members, what they say may be relevant sort of to bring a factual case.
But the extent they can speak to the ideology or the motivation of their family members is very difficult for them, for understandable reasons.
LEMON: I want to talk about questions that you may have right now.
First, Juliette, what's your biggest question right now about the killer? KAYYEM: I sort of am giving up on the why; after all these cases and I'm looking at the how. I've been on air all day. We are a nation that gets so focused on motivation and could we stop these people from doing this that we sometimes forget the bigger discussion about access to weapons.
And I'll just say it out loud. I know it's very political but with other terrorists or other forms of terror, I would say, whether it's cars and the use of cars, we always see defensive measures being put in place.
Whether it's the use of airplanes, we get better on airplane security.
But we look at case after case after case of a country that people are dying in record numbers from guns.
And I want to know the how, the sort of how did he get these guns?
Were they lawfully acquired?
Were they unlawfully acquired?
How did he change them if they were changed?
And then begin a dialogue that's looking at this issue as an overall security issue. I'll let the political people debate the politics of it.
But for security people, you just can't look at these numbers and say, oh, well, we can't do anything about it at this stage. It's just too much, Don. It's too much.
LEMON: Art, do you want to respond to that?
RODERICK: No, I agree. I think the key to this is going to be not only the motive but, OK, how?
Over what period of time did he acquire these weapons?
When did he acquire the ammunition?
I think that's going to be key here. And Juliette's right, I agree with her. The politicians --
[00:55:00]
RODERICK: -- are going to argue this back and forth.
But, you know, what's the use of an automatic weapon in this particular instance?
That's going to be -- for me, did he modify those?
Did he buy them?
And I think that's going to be the important question here. What's he doing with automatic weapons in this (INAUDIBLE)?
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: And, Cedric, they're easily modified. But I'll give you the last word on this, Cedric.
ALEXANDER: Well, let me say this much, Don, in relation to this whole political piece, which will probably end up being the theme about this tomorrow in regards to he having those weapons.
What I'm more concerned about than anything is, who is he?
Who is he and who has he demonstrated himself to be?
And what is it about this individual that we just don't know about?
There's clearly a dark side to him that has not been seen, observed or at least reported by family and friends thus far. But I certainly believe, once they talk to his girlfriend, once they do an investigation, that is going to be much more thorough and complete in a very short period of time.
We're going to know more about who he is. It's not about the weaponry itself. Guns are accessible in this country. That's just a reality. So whether he purchased them legally or illegally, at this point, it doesn't matter. We have got 59 people dead and over 500-some people injured. I want to know who this man is.
LEMON: Thank you, Cedric.
Thank you, Juliette.
Art, thank you as well.
That's it for us tonight. Thanks for watching. Our live coverage continues next with Erin Burnett right here in Las Vegas and John Vause in Los Angeles. Good night.
