Note found in Las Vegas gunman’s hotel room contained calculations to maximise kills
Gunman’s hotel suite gave him an ideal perch from which to carry out his attack on a crowd some 365 metres away
A note discovered in the hotel room of Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock featured hand-written calculations on where he needed to aim to increase his accuracy and number of kills, an investigator said.
The piece of paper was found by police officers who stormed Paddock’s room after he launched his attack from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel Sunday night – killing 58 people and injuring nearly 500.
In an interview set to air on Sunday, Officer David Newton of the Las Vegas Police Department’s K-9 unit, told CBS’ 60 Minutes he noticed Paddock’s note “on the nightstand near his shooting platform”.
“I could see on it he had written the distance, the elevation he was on, the drop of what his bullet was going to be for the crowd. So he had that written down and figured out so he would know where to shoot to hit his targets from there,” he said.
Newton added that forcing entry into the room with an explosive before finding Paddock’s body and an arsenal of weapons was like something “out of a movie”.
It was “very eerie,” he said.