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The Las Vegas shooter took ‘more than 10’ suitcases into his hotel suite in the days before the massacre

Mandalay Bay (James Havard/Flickr)

A timeline of Stephen Paddock’s activities began to unfold nearly 24 hours after he shot at a crowd of concertgoers in Las Vegas late Sunday night.

Law-enforcement officials said during a Monday-afternoon press conference that Paddock began preparing for the attack soon after checking in to a large, two-room suite at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on Thursday.

Paddock brought “in excess of 10” suitcases to the hotel, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said.

It was not immediately clear when Paddock began bringing those suitcases in, and his activity apparently went unnoticed. One reporter at the Monday-afternoon briefing asked Lombardo, “No one thought the wiser?”

“I wish that would’ve happened, ma’am,” Lombardo said. “I absolutely wish that would’ve happened.”

The police said Paddock had 23 firearms in his 32nd-floor hotel suite, along with thousands of rounds of ammunition. He broke two of the windows in the room, from which he fired shots at the more than 20,000 people attending the Route 91 Harvest country music festival across the street. The first shots were reported at 10:08 p.m. PDT.

Law-enforcement officials responding to Mandalay Bay went to the 29th floor of the hotel, Lombardo said, believing the gunfire was coming from between the 29th and 32nd floors. “We had to evaluate each floor moving up.” Lombardo said, adding that complaints from customers and information from security led them to Paddock’s room.

“They checked each floor until they located what they believed to be the room,” Lombardo said. A SWAT team entered the room, but Paddock was dead, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

At least 59 people were killed, with at least 527 others injured either by bullets or by trying to escape them.

Investigators were evaluating multiple crime scenes, including the concert site, Paddock’s hotel suite, his home in Mesquite, Nevada, and another home linked to him in Reno, Nevada.

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