FBI Finally Wraps Up Mandalay Bay Investigation, Finds No Motive
In October of 2017, a man named Stephen Paddock opened fire on a packed country music festival below him from a perch in the high-rise Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, killing 58 individuals and wounding hundreds more.
Nearly 900 people were wounded in the attack, though not all injuries sustained came from gunshots. Almost immediately, a number of questions were raised about the shooter and what could have motivated him to commit such a terrible atrocity.
Now more than 15 months after that horrifically frightening mass shooting event, the FBI has finally wrapped up its investigation, but the final report really doesn’t include any additional information that wasn’t already known and there remain many unanswered questions.
The Associated Press reported that the FBI said in the report that they were incapable of determining any sort of “single or clear motivating factor” behind the deadly shooting, other than the possibilities that the shooter was dealing with failing health issues and had a desire to become criminally infamous, as his bank-robber father — a fugitive who ended up on the FBI’s Most Wanted list — had been.
Aaron Rouse, FBI special agent in charge of the Las Vegas field office, told the AP, “It wasn’t about MGM, Mandalay Bay or a specific casino or venue.”
Instead, Rouse said, “It was all about doing the maximum amount of damage and him obtaining some form of infamy.”
The three-page FBI report noted that, aside from the aforementioned desire for infamy and his declining mental and physical health, there were several other “potential motivating factors” that could have prompted the attack, though none are all that satisfying to understanding why the attack was carried out.
Unfortunately, “This report comes as close to understanding the why as we’re ever going to get,” Rouse told the AP.
The report’s findings dismissed the notion that the shooter had any sort of ideological, political or religious motivations for the shooting. It also found that he had acted alone in his commission of mass murder.
The report also noted that, despite there being no “manifesto, video, suicide note or other communication” explaining his reasoning or extensive planning behind the attack, it was determined that the shooter had intended to commit suicide with the one handgun he brought along with the dozens of semi-automatic rifles he used to perform the mass shooting.
All of those rifles, by the way — many of which were equipped with “bump stock” attachments to simulate rapid fire, as well as actual high-capacity magazines, bipods and scopes — were all purchased legally in the year prior to the assault, as was the ammunition used.
The report concluded that the shooter was a private and impersonal man with declining health issues who wanted to go out on his own terms in an infamous blaze of inglorious murder, which in the view of the FBI analysts was “consistent with his personality” and similar to what has been observed in other active shooter situations studied by the FBI.
“He acted alone. He committed a heinous act. He died by his own hand,” Rouse said. “If he wanted to leave a message, he would have left a message. Bottom line is he didn’t want people to know.”
It may very well be true that the shooter committed his murderous atrocity simply because he felt like doing so, but that rather unspecific line of reasoning could be applied to just about every mass shooter who has ever opened fire on a crowd of innocent and vulnerable people.
Nor is that explanation satisfying in light of the fact that the FBI is widely regarded as the premier investigative agency in the world, and has an all but unlimited pool of resources to pull from. Yet, none of that appears to have helped the bureau determine a specific motive for this attack.
The American people have demanded answers in what is believed to be the worst mass shooting attack in American history, but it appears those answers won’t be coming from the FBI or Las Vegas Police Department, ever.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
