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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Judy Tong (earlier), Sam Levin (earlier) and Alan Yuhas (earlier)

Las Vegas shooting suspect's girlfriend is a 'person of interest' – as it happened

We are wrapping up this blog now. Thanks for reading. You can read the latest coverage here:

The latest

  • Gunman Stephen Paddock’s girlfriend is “a person of interest” in the criminal investigation into the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.
  • She is reportedly on her way back to the US.
  • Donald Trump plans to visit Las Vegas on Wednesday, and the White House has suggested that the tragedy should not inspire new gun control laws.
  • Portraits are continuing to emerge of the victims, which include local government workers, students and travelers from across North America.
  • A 59th victim died on Tuesday night, according to the Associated Press. The death toll from the shooting is now at least 60, including the gunman.
  • ATF has said 47 firearms have been recovered in three locations - the hotel room, Verde and Mesquite, Nevada – and that 12 of them had been modified.
  • Officials believe the attack was carefully planned and have discovered that Paddock set up cameras in and around his hotel room – two in the hallway and one in the peephole of his room door.
  • The sheriff said the suspect’s motives still remain unknown: “This person may have radicalised, unbeknownst to us, and we want to identify that source.”
  • Gun control advocates have called for reforms, including a ban on “bump stocks” used to convert a semi-automatic rifle into a weapon that fires like a fully automatic one.
  • Anonymous law enforcement officials told several outlets that Paddock wired $100,000 to the Philippines before the shooting.

Meanwhile ABC in Australia says it has been told that Marilou Danley, the partner of Paddock, has left the Philippines and is returning to the US.

The Associate Press is just reporting that another person has died of their injuries sustained in Sunday’s mass shooting. It means that the number of victims has risen to 59. The shooter Stephen Paddock is also dead which would mean a total death toll of 60.

Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center said the victim died Tuesday afternoon. No details about the person were released and the hospital said it still has 31 people in critical condition.

The additional fatality kept the death toll at 59 after Clark County Coroner John Fudenberg revised his earlier count of victims downward by one.

Undersheriff McMahill also clarified earlier reports of cameras set up by the shooter in the hotel. He said that two cameras had been set up in the hallway, and one in the hotel room door’s peephole.

Coroner: Death toll of 59 includes the gunman

The coroner gave updated numbers of the dead, clarifying that the 59 included the shooter and 58 victims.

McMahill returned to the podium to show some dramatic police body camera footage from the night. But first he paid tribute to Charleston Hartfield, a Las Vegas police officer who was off-duty at the festival with his wife.

McMahill choked up as he talked about Hartfield, calling him a “hero”.

Though the officer was at the festival as a civilian, McMahill said, “he was acting as a police officer.

Special agent in charge Jill Snyder also updated reporters on the firearms that have been recovered. She said 47 firearms had been found in 3 different locations, including the hotel room, and Verde and Mesquite, Nevada. The weapons – rifles shotguns pistols – were purchased in Nevada, Utah, California and Texas. Snyder said that none recovered appear to be homemade. She added that several bump stocks were found.

At an evening press conference, Las Vegas undersheriff Kevin McMahill is updating reporters on details of the shooting and investigation, but warned: “I need some patience from you. This investigation is a long time from being concluded.” He said that it would be days before the hotel room was finishing being processed.

He also that the shooting lasted for “somewhere between nine and 11 minutes.”

“I want you to think about that,” McMahill said. “That’s a remarkable response by this police department.”

Profile of a victim: Cameron Robinson, 28

Cameron Robinson, right, with his boyfriend
Cameron Robinson, right, with his boyfriend, Bobby Eardley. Photograph: Courtesy of Bobby Eardley

Cameron Robinson was a young city of Las Vegas employee, who was at the festival with his boyfriend, Bobby Eardley, when the popping sounds started.

Eardley recalled on Tuesday, “And I just remember being really upset – why would somebody set off firecrackers at a venue like this when shootings have happened?”

After a second round, Eardley decided it was time for them to move: “I remember seeing people sitting on the ground and wondering why they were sitting because they were going to get trampled. And I realized they were bleeding.”

Eardley, 36, and Robinson, 28, had been together for four years after meeting on OkCupid; a year ago Robinson moved in with Eardley in St George, Utah. Robinson was a records specialist for the city.

“Long before he came to work for the city he gave me his resume,” recalled his boss, Las Vegas city attorney Brad Jerbic, “and the first thing I remember noticing is that he got his bachelor’s degree when he was 20 year old – that immediately got my attention.”

When Jerbic hired him several years ago, his desk ended up being in the center of the office. “It was a perfect metaphor,” Jerbic said. Robinson organized potlucks, brought food to the office, ran games at the Christmas party.

With Robinson, “everything went up a notch. If it was fun it was more fun, if the records were being processed efficiently it was more efficiently.”

Robinson’s sister, Meghan Ervin, wrote on Facebook: “I was never suppose to say good bye to you little brother. You were suppose to take over the world ... I love you to the moon and back.”

What did Eardley love about him?

“He’s my other half. I’m the crazy, fly by the seat of your pants - he’s the straight laced and level headed one. ... And so many other things. His quirky little smile, his big teeth, his crooked sunglasses… so many things.”

Read the Guardian’s full account of the victims:

A California correctional officer has been identified as one of those killed in the shooting.

Derrick “Bo” Taylor, 52, was a 29-year veteran of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, department spokesman Bill Sessa confirmed to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Taylor led inmates fighting wildfires, a position, Sessa said, that many officers sought because they believed in inmate rehabilitation.

The latest

Updated

A US official told the Associated Press that the shooter Stephen Paddock had reported at least a “dozen gambling transactions of $10,000 or more” in recent weeks. More from the AP:

The official also said Tuesday that Paddock had transferred $100,000 to the Philippines in the days before the attack... The official said investigators are still attempting to trace that money. The official, who was briefed by law enforcement, wasn’t authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation.

The person also said investigators are focusing more attention on what the girlfriend of Paddock may have known about the attack. Federal investigators are expected to question Marilou Danley when she returns to the US on Wednesday.

The Guardian’s Tom McCarthy on why gun control has failed in the US:

From one angle, the answer is complicated. It involves the powerful gun lobby, political partisanship, the hundreds of millions of guns already in US civilian hands, the fact that mass shootings, while horrifying, represent only a sliver of US gun deaths, and a national mythology attached to guns.

From another angle, the answer is simple. The United States could, in fact, adopt gun control – if the public felt strongly enough about it. “If public opinion does not demand change in Congress, it will not change,” Barack Obama said in June 2014.

Read the full report here:

The Las Vegas emergency management team says it no longer needs donations at the family assistance center it set up after the shooting:

Here are some other ways to continue supporting the victims:

Nevada governor on background checks

Nevada governor Brian Sandoval, a Republican, has responded to questions about why the state has not enforced a new gun control measure voters approved last November. As Guardian reporter Lois Beckett explained, voters passed a law that would have required private sellers to conduct the same criminal background check on buyers that licensed gun dealers already use:

Days before it was scheduled to be implemented, the state’s attorney general, also a Republican, released a legal opinion saying the law was unenforceable and that citizens were “excused from compliance”. (The law may not have prevented the Sunday attack, given that the suspect is believed to have passed a background check, but it could have provided a further paper trail to track his purchases).

It turns out that Nevadans for Background Checks, the group that backed the ballot measure, sent a letter to the governor threatening to sue over the blocked policy – days before the Las Vegas mass shooting. The letter sent last week gave Sandoval a deadline of 9 October to begin implementing the policy before the group took the state government to court, according to the Nevada Independent.

The governor’s office has since responded to local reporters asking about the lawsuit threat, saying he would ask the attorney general for an opinion:

Jason Aldean, the country music star who was playing a headlining set when the gunman started firing at his audience, has just announced that he is canceling his upcoming shows this weekend:

I feel like out of respect for the victims, their families and our fans, it is the right thing to do. It has been an emotional time for everyone involved this week, so we plan to take some time to mourn the ones we have lost and be close with our family and friends.

His tour will resume in Tulsa, Oklahoma next week. Read more on Aldean from Guardian writer Mark Guarino:

Suspect Stephen Paddock used to berate his girlfriend at a local Starbucks, employees told the Los Angeles Times:

Canadian media has confirmed the identity of a fourth Canadian killed in the Las Vegas attack, Ashifa Kassam reports from Toronto.

Tara Roe Smith, 34, and her husband were at the festival in Las Vegas as part of a weekend getaway. The mother of two young children, who was originally from Manitoba but lived in a small community near Calgary, became separated from her husband and friends when the gunman opened fire.

As news of the shooting broke, friends and family of Smith pleaded for assistance in locating Smith on social media. “My cousin and his wife Tara Smith were at the concert. Please pray that’s she is safe. They were split up during the commotion,” her cousin, Christa Ehman, posted on Facebook.

White House on gun control: no new laws needed

The White House’s message on gun policy following the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history is that “new laws won’t stop a mad man” and that the problem isn’t “too few gun laws”. According to a copy of official talking points the White House distributed to Trump allies, obtained by NBC News, the administration has is pushing a strong defense of the Second Amendment:

We welcome a reasoned and well-informed debate on public safety and our constitutional freedoms, but we reject the false choice that we can’t have both. And when it comes to gun control, let’s be clear: new laws won’t stop a mad man committed to harming innocent people. They will curtail the freedoms of law abiding citizens...

We shouldn’t rush toward compromising our freedoms before we have all the facts.

The full text is here:

Gun control advocates, however, have argued that there are clear policies and restrictions that could have saved lives. From Guardian senior reporter Lois Beckett:

Gun control advocates are calling for a ban on “bump stocks”, the largely unregulated novelty devices which Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock may have used to convert a semi-automatic rifle into a weapon that mimics the continuous fire of a fully automatic weapon.

At least two bump stocks were recovered in Paddock’s hotel room, the Associated Press reported on Monday night, citing law enforcement sources. It is not yet clear whether they were used in his attack.

Bump stocks attach to semi-automatic weapons and harness the recoil of the gun to allow a shooter to fire much faster than they could do if they repeatedly pulled the trigger – as the rifle recoils, the trigger bumps forward into the shooter’s finger to speed up the rate of fire.

As one company that sells the devices, Bump Fire Systems, put it on its website, “Did you know that you can do simulated full-auto firing and it is absolutely legal?” It listed the price of one stock at $99.99.

More on the policy debate here:

Michelle Obama on gun violence

Former first lady Michelle Obama offered her condolences to the victims on Tuesday, speaking with television producer Shonda Rhimes at the Pennsylvania Conference for Women in Philadelphia. From CBS News:

Obama lamented that offering comfort to victims of gun violence has become “too much” of part of the job of being president, and expressed her condolences to the victims and families of the deadly Las Vegas shooting...

She said that much of the role as commander-in-chief is “overseeing that kind of loss and really not having a solution to offer families when you comfort them”. And there is a dearth of solutions to the increasing occurrence of gun violence violence because the country is “not at that point yet”, she suggested.

Describing the challenges of being in the White House during tragedies, she added, “That’s the kind of stuff that you’re dealing with on a day-to-day basis, and you open the newspaper, and every thing in it is your husband’s responsibility and indirectly, yours.”

The president is leaving Puerto Rico now and says he is preparing to visit Las Vegas Wednesday to pay his respects:

Profiles of victims

Sam Levin here, taking over our live coverage of the Las Vegas shooting, following the news that all but three of the 59 victims have been identified. Portraits of the lives lost are starting to emerge. Here are a few:

Lisa Romero-Muniz, a high school secretary from Gallup, New Mexico, was an “incredible loving and sincere friend, mentor and advocate for students”, the Gallup-McKinley County Public Schools interim superintendent, Mike Hyatt, said in a statement.

“As a colleague, she was also outgoing, kind and considerate of all those she worked with,” he said.

A wife, mother, and grandmother, Romero-Muniz had been in Las Vegas with her husband to see the country music singer Jason Aldean for their wedding anniversary.

Charleston Hartfield: An off-duty Las Vegas police officer and military veteran named Charleston Hartfield was identified by friends as a victim, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“I don’t know a better man than Charles,” said Troy Rhett, who said he’d been friends with Hartfield for eight years. “They say it’s always the good ones we lose early. There’s no truer statement than that with Charles.”

Sonny Melton, 29, who lived in Big Sandy, Tennessee, and worked at a nearby hospital, was the first victim publicly identified. Family members confirmed to the news station WSMV that he was killed in the gunfire.

His wife, Heather Melton, told WZTV that her husband had shielded her from bullets on the ground when the shooting began. “He saved my life and lost his,” she said.

A friend of the couple told the Paris (Tennessee) Post-Intelligencer that the two had gotten married about a year ago.

Read the Guardian’s full account of the victims from reporter Jamiles Lartey:

Las Vegas update

The latest from Las Vegas sheriff Joe Lombardo’s afternoon press conference on Sunday’s mass shooting, which killed 59 people and injured more than 500 others.

  • Marilou Danley, the suspect’s girlfriend, is a “person of interest” who is cooperating with police but outside the country. Danley went abroad on 25 September, before the gunman, Stephen Paddock, booked into the Mandalay Bay on the 28th. She is in the Philippines, Lombardo said.
  • The gunman modified some of his weapons and set up a camera in a roomservice cart to watch the hallway outside his room. Lombardo said a “bump stop” modification appears to have been used on some of the guns.
  • Police have identified all but three of the 59 people killed. Families searching for missing relatives can go to or call the Las Vegas Convention Center, which is serving as a hub for emergency efforts.
  • Investigators recovered “numerous electronic items, additional five handguns and two shotguns and a plethora of ammunition” at a Reno property owned by Paddock. They had previously found 23 guns in the shooter’s hotel room in the Mandalay Bay resort, 19 at his home in Mesquite, Nevada. Police also have 67 body cameras and hours of surveillance and phone footage to parse.
  • A hotel security guard briefly engaged the gunman while police were searching for his location, Lombardo said. Then police and Swat teams converged on the room, around which time Paddock is believed to have killed himself.
  • Anonymous law enforcement officials told several outlets that Paddock wired $100,000 to the Philippines before the shooting. NBC, CNN and the New York Times reported the detail, but none of the unnamed officials identified the intended recipient or purpose behind the transfer.
  • The gunman’s motive remains unknown.

Updated

The sheriff says police are looking at video on more than 67 body cameras, and even more footage from surveillance cameras, phones and other sources.

He shies away from other details of the investigation. Going through all the video will take an enormous amount of time, he says, in part because of chain-of-custody issues and the sheer hours of footage.

A reporter asks about training and the police response to the shooter. He says patrol officers assessed the situation, and that a hotel security guard, due to “the unfortunate actions” of the gunman, briefly engaged him. After that point police, security, and the Swat team coordinated to descend on the room.

He’s asked again about the gunman’s girlfriend. “I’m comfortable saying she’s located in the Philippines,” is all Lombardo will divulge.

He stops taking questions shortly thereafter.

“This was obviously premeditated. The shooter evaluated everything he did, which is troublesome,” Lombardo says.

A reporter asks whether room service was provided to the gunman’s room over the course of his stay, from 28 October to 1 October. Lombardo says it was.

Lombardo praises emergency responders, from police to firefighters and medical personnel, at length.

He says he prays that any citizen who might see something would tell police, “because we can’t see all things at all times.”

He urges people not to fear they might “bother the police”. “We ask you to bother the police.”

“What went right is we saved hundreds of lives,” he says, saying that he’s horrified by what could have happened “with this guy having an ability with those weaponry, the carnage that could occur”.

“A lot more was prevented with police action in short time and private security action to save some lives”

Sheriff: gunman set up camera

Lombardo says the gunman had set up a camera in a room service cart outside his Mandalay Bay hotel room.

He thinks that he did so in an attempt to monitor anyone who might be approaching.

Fielding a question about the length of the shooting, Lombardo says that police’s best estimate is approximately nine minutes of sustained gunfire.

The sheriff details more of the police response, saying it was “hard to pinpoint the room from the outside”.

Police teams split up, he said, and “moved over to the Mandalay Bay in order to locate and engage, but that was in conjunction with the Mandalay Bay security.”

One member of hotel security at first engaged with the gunman, then “backed off” and coordinated with police until the Swat team arrived.

Lombardo praises the “fantastic” work of the hotel security, and citizens who worked to help each other in the chaos. “I don’t want anybody assuming that they would be unsafe by staying at one of our hotels.”

A reporter asks about police training, and whether the sheriff is concerned.

“Of course I’m concerned. The world has changed. Who would have ever imagined this situation. I couldn’t have imagined it. For this individual to take it upon himself to create this chaos and harm is unbelievable.”

Updated

Sheriff Lombardo says police have completed the investigation at the Reno property.

He says they recovered evidence there: “numerous electronic items, additional five handguns and two shotguns and a plethora of ammunition.”

“We have served search warrants at three separate locations. the room at the Mandalay Bay, the Mesquite location and the Reno location.”

Someone asks what are the modifications on the weapons. Lombardo says Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms are working on that, but that he can say he’s aware of a modification called a “bump stop”, that can make up a semiautomatic to function more like an automatic weapon.

Asked about the gunman’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, he says that he can’t provide details but that she is on communication with police and they anticipate working with her in the investigation.

He does not say her current whereabouts: “all I know is the Philippines.” He categorizes her as “a person of interest”.

He again warns that he will not have many specifics to give out. “There is a lot of information I do know. Okay. But it’s an ongoing investigation. And when I say I do not know, I may know.”

Asked about injuries, he says that he believes the count has decreased slightly because of a “double-count issue” at one of the hospitals.

“We have trampled injuries, we have people trying to escape and injuries of their own device, we have gunshot wounds, so if you’re looking at total injuries,” he says, “it goes across the board.”

The sheriff says that the city appreciates the outpouring from the public and corporations, but that officials are struggling to handle logistics as well as the investigation and services for victims and their families.

There comes a point where we can’t manage it. The Red Cross is unable to manage it.

If it’s hard goods such as water, or canned goods, or stuff that will not become perishable, Three Square and Catholic Charities are accepting donations.

Commissioner Steve Sisolak next says that a GoFundMe for the victims has raised $3.7m so far, and a few private citizens have separately given several hundred thousand dollars. MGM Resorts, in turn, has donated an additional $3m.

Las Vegas sheriff: all but three victims ID'd

Nevada police have begun a press conference to update the public on the investigation into Sunday’s mass shooting in Las Vegas, one of the worst in modern American history.

Sheriff Joe Lombardo speaks first. He stresses “it’s an ongoing investigation so it’s limited the details that I can give you.”

“Our department has worked through the night to identify all of Sunday night’s shooting.” He says they have identified all but three victims, and the FBI are working to clear the crime scene at the hotel.

He says that police anticipate Las Vegas Boulevard will open in the next few hours as the federal agents finish their work.

“We’re asking for anyone who might have information about the shooting in a criminal capacity or you are a victim, call 311.” If you are out of state 702-828-3111.

At the convention center, family reunification is still going on, where people can go to file missing persons report, contact the coroner, and ask for information. That phone number is 1-866-535-5654.

Updated

San Juan mayor 'hopes Trump stops spouting'

San Juan mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz has responded to Donald Trump’s remarks that Puerto Rico’s recovery has “thrown our budget a little out of whack,” and his suggestion that the island has not suffered “a real catastrophe like Katrina.”

“I would hope that the president of the United States stops spouting out comments that are hurtful to the people of Puerto Rico,” Cruz told CNN. “It doesn’t make you feel good.”

Cruz described two extremely dissimilar meetings with White House staff. One was for the cameras, she said, in which Trump held court among various officials, praised many of them, and compared the catastrophe favorably to hurricane Katrina in 2005. “You can be very proud, only sixteen instead of thousands [killed] in Katrina,” he said. “Sixteen versus literally thousands.”

This meeting, Cruz said, “was a public relations situation” that did not deal with the problems on the island.

“We tend to judge human crises by the number of people who die instantly,” she said. “So of course when you say Katrina there were thousands, that doesn’t convey the message that people are dying on a continuum because they don’t have dialysis, they don’t have healthcare, they’re drinking out of creeks.”

“Sometimes his style of communication gets in the way,” Cruz said, of accomplishing goals. “Rather than commander in chief he really becomes miscommunicator in chief.”

The mayor briefly met the president at the Muniz air base earlier on Tuesday, and reportedly tried to tell him that their shared priority was to save lives, saying “it’s not about politics.”

She echoed that point to CNN, saying: “it’s about respect for the Puerto Rican people and it’s about saving lives.”

Cruz praised other federal officials in the Trump administration, saying that after the president’s remarks she and four other mayors spoke at length with officials from the budget office, small business administration, and other agencies.

“There was a disconnect between what they were hearing and what was really happening,” Cruz said, calling this second meeting “productive”.

She stressed the logistics involved in recovery, especially with communications and roads still in disarray, if not inaccessible, around much of the island.

“We need robust centers of distribution, a robust supply chain that is not only robust but also consistent,” she said, adding that too often, “you get one pallet of water today you don’t get five for the next week.”

She said that she and the officials talked about long-term planning with contracts, saying that they should set aside 20% of funds for municipalities, and create regional distribution centers to help re-establish supply lines around the island.

“If you have a $1m contract, set aside $200,000 of that so that it is the municipality that does the work,” she said.

The two meetings, she said, were “totally disconnected”. Cruz described one as “Alice in Wonderland” and the other as “back to reality”.

“I saw a real connection between the reality and the White House staff,” she said.

“I would love to say nothing more than to stand in front of the camera and to say we were heard and things are moving along,” she continued. But she said she could not, given the circumstances: “if we don’t have interconnectivity, if we don’t stabilize the hospitals, if we don’t have a robust supply chain…”

Updated

Republicans delay silencer bill

Leaders of the House of Representatives have again delayed their plan to loosen regulations on gun silencers in the wake of the Las Vegas rampage.

“We are all reeling from this horror in Las Vegas,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters on Tuesday. “This is just awful.”

Ryan.
Ryan. Photograph: Shawn Thew/EPA

Lawmakers have indefinitely shelved the bill, supported by the National Rifle Association and a House committee last month, Ryan said.

“I don’t know when it will be scheduled,” he said. House Republicans have also proposed a bill to let people with concealed-carry permits to take their guns across state lines.

Earlier this year they delayed a vote on the silencer bill after a gunman attacked Republican lawmakers practicing baseball.

Democratic leaders in the House have pushed for new gun rules in the wake of the shooting, though Republicans, who have stymied such efforts for years, control both chambers of Congress.

The House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, and senators Richard Durbin and Chris Murphy have urged for background checks on all gun purchases.

“Gun violence is a public health crisis,” Durbin said on Tuesday, invoking the mass shootings in Chicago, Oregon, and elsewhere in the last few years.

“We failed to respond in time for those victims and their families. But if we work together, we can stop shootings in the future.”

Pelosi asked Ryan to create a committee to research gun violence and recommend prevention solutions. But the effort appears largely symbolic: a bipartisan effort to expand background checks failed in the Senate in 2013, after the massacre of 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut.

On Tuesday, senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, echoed the White House in saying that discussion of new gun rules would be “premature”.

The president has met San Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, according to the White House pool report, but the exchange was brief.

On Tuesday Trump shook the hand of the San Juan mayor he publicly insulted, after declaring on Twitter on Saturday that she had “poor leadership.”

According to the pool report, the pair “exchanged pleasantries,” and Trump asked Carmen Yulín Cruz how she was.

Before meeting the president, Cruz said in a statement that she wanted to make clear to him that their shared priority should be “about saving lives, not about politics”.

Trump accused Cruz of “poor leadership” over the weekend, after she criticized his acting secretary of Homeland Security, who called Puerto Rico “a good news story”.

Cruz responded to the acting secretary with an impassioned speech: “If anybody out there is listening to us, we are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency and the bureaucracy.”

Trump later criticized the work of Puerto Rican relief works, saying “they want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort.” He then called his critics “politically motivated ingrates”. On Tuesday he said that Cruz had “come back a long way”.

NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell tweeted that, during their short encounter on the island, Cruz told Trump “it’s not about politics” and that “Trump didn’t answer then pointedly ignored her.”

President Donald Trump shakes hands with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz.
President Donald Trump shakes hands with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Updated

On Puerto Rico, the president is continuing along his tightly controlled press tour with residents, local officials and relief workers.

At one location, toured the Cavalry Chapel, in south-east San Juan, he started tossing some supply items into the crowd, according to the White House pool report.

Shaking hands with people in the crowd, the report reads, “picked up a can of tinned chicken breast and held it aloft for the crowd to see.”

“He handed one man in the crowd a pack of batteries.”

Then, as his wife followed him: “he held up a flashlight and showed it to the crowd, shaking hands the whole time.”

“Trump kept picking up items from tables laden with supplies, showing them to the crowd and handing them to people with outstretched hands. ‘There’s a lot of love in this room,’ the president said. ‘Great people.’”

The president “moved to a pile of yellow bags containing rice and handed them to whoever was nearest. He tossed rolls of paper towels into the crowd. Two were caught but one fell onto the carpet. The first lady was handing out small boxed solar panels.”

According to the pooler, chief of staff John Kelly “conferred in quiet tones” with the director of FEMA, Brock Long.

Donald TrumpPresident Donald Trump tosses paper towels into a crowd as he hands out supplies at Calvary Chapel, Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017, in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. Trump is in Puerto Rico to survey hurricane damage. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Trump throwing supplies into a crowd. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Updated

The University Medical Center of Southern Nevada has provided a few harrowing details of how its patients are faring in the aftermath of Sunday’s shooting.

The hospital is the main critical trauma facility in the region, meaning that it has been at the center of efforts to save the lives of the worst injured people. More than 20 people were admitted in critical condition, the center said in a statement, and many still need breathing tubes.

Many of the gunshot victims did not require surgery, but did need blood transfusions or chest tubes. The hospital took in 104 people in all in the hours after the attack.

Anonymous law enforcement officials have told NBC News and CNN that the Las Vegas shooting suspect, Stephen Paddock, wired $100,000 to an account in the Philippines at some point before Sunday’s shooting.

According to NBC, citing unnamed “senior law enforcement officials”, Paddock wired the money to an account there in the week before the shooting. His girlfriend, Marilou Danley, was born in the Philippines and was abroad at the time of the shooting.

A law enforcement official also told CNN that Paddock wired $100,000 to an account in the Philippines, but similarly had no information about to whom it was intended.

Police said Danley, who has been abroad since 25 September, is cooperating with them and plans to meet with investigators on her return to the US. They said at a briefing on Monday that Paddock, who checked into his hotel on 28 September, was seen on surveillance footage taking suitcases – now believed to be weapons – into his room alone.

On Monday, las Vegas sheriff Joe Lombardo said that police have spoken repeatedly with Danley but believe her “at this time not to be involved” in the shooting.

Dozens of off-duty police officers and firefighters were in attendance at the Las Vegas music festival on Sunday night. Several were injured or killed, or lost loved ones in the shooting.

San Francisco police chief William Scott has identified one of the 59 killed as, Stacee Etcheber, the spouse of an SFPD officer.

Stacee was taken in a senseless act of violence as her husband, SFPD officer Vinnie Etcheber, heroically rushed to aid shooting victims in Las Vegas on Sunday. Stacee was a beloved mother of two young children and a well-loved hair stylist in Marin County. As we grieve, we ask the public to keep the Etcheber family in their thoughts, along with all of the victims of this tragic incident.”

The president is currently meeting with Americans on Puerto Rico who are struggling to rebuild in the wake of hurricane Maria. But his cohort is sparse: only his familiar aides and a select group of residents and leaders.

He is expected to deliver more remarks over the course of the visit; the itinerary handed out by the White House shows that he intends to stay in and near the capital of San Juan.

Trump and first lady Melania Trump with Puerto Rico’s Governor Ricardo Rosselló, left, and his wife Beatriz Areizagain Guaynabo in Guaynabo.
Trump and first lady Melania Trump with Puerto Rico’s Governor Ricardo Rosselló, left, and his wife Beatriz Areizagain in Guaynabo. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP
Trump meeting with residents.
Trump meeting with residents. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
The president on a walking tour with the governor.
The president on a walking tour with the governor. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

Despite the president’s effusive praise for federal recovery efforts, Puerto Rico’s situation remains dire, as the territory’s government makes clear on a site tracking its progress.

Only 6.89% of the island has power and only 45% has potable water. In Puerto Rico’s north, on 13% has safe water. Flights are running at 25% capacity, and only 27% of ATMs are operating. More than 9,400 people are still in shelters around the territory. Much of the island has little to no capacity to communicate – meaning people do not know where to deliver supplies or how to get them.

And the crisis is one that exacerbates with time: in 80-90F heat, with large areas of stagnant, often polluted water, health risks like mosquito-borne illnesses multiply.

Although federal agencies have tried to tally the deaths during and after hurricane Katrina (between 1,100 and 1,833, depending on the count), the actual number will likely never be known. State officials continued counting victims for months after the storm had dissipated, of direct victims (people killed by drowning or debris, for instance), and of indirect victims, such as being cut off from medical care or lacking basic supplies in the aftermath of the hurricane.

Updated

Trump compares disaster favorably to Katrina

Trump continues to go name various cabinet members and administration officials around the room.

He sees Mick Mulvaney, the White House budget chief. “Mick is in charge of a thing called the budget,” the president says.

“I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack,” he says, “because we’ve spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico. But that’s fine because we’ve saved a lot of lives.”

“Every death is a horror but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina and the hundreds and hundreds of people who died,” he says, alluding to the 2005 catastrophe during and after which between 1,100 and 1,833 people died.

“And you look at a storm like this which was really overpowering,” he continues, asking the governor what the current death toll on the island is. Rossello says 16 people were confirmed killed; officials have repeatedly said they expect the toll to rise.

“You can be very proud, only sixteen instead of thousands in Katrina,” the president says. “Sixteen versus literally thousands.”

Updated

Trump addresses Puerto Rican leaders

In Puerto Rico, Donald Trump is addressing military and recovery personnel and the territory’s leaders.

He recounts the string of hurricanes, Harvey, Irma and Maria, that swept through the Caribbean on paths toward US states and territories.

“I was going to be here a week ago if you remember and that was the day of the hurricane,” the president says.

He then goes on an extended litany of thanks to various federal officials, Puerto Rico’s governor and its congresswoman.

“Brock has been unbelievable,” he says, to FEMA administrator Brock Long. He thanks Elaine Duke, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, who last week called the recovery a “good news story”, angering San Juan’s mayor.

“This has been the toughest one, this has been a category five, which few people have ever even heard of,” Trump says.

Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico as a category 4 hurricane.

He thanks homeland security adviser Tom Bossert, and general Buchanan.
“There’s no doubt about it you are a general,” he says. “I don’t want a general who plays games.”

He thanks Governor Ricardo Rossello: “Your governor, he’s not even from my party and he started right at the beginning appreciating what we’ve been doing. He’s been tremendously supportive.”

“Right from the beginning this governor did not play politics. He was calling it like it was,” Trump continues. “He was giving us the highest grades, and on behalf of our country I want to thank you.”

“I also want to thank you congresswoman,” he continues, reading Jenniffer González-Colón’s name off a piece of paper. He says he “watched [her] the other day” and was happy to hear what she was saying.

“It’s not about me and it’s about these incredible people from the military to FEMA and the first responders.”

Updated

As Donald Trump arrives in Puerto Rico – Air Force One has landed and greeted Governor Ricardo Rossello and military personnel – Nevada’s leaders are still pleading for locals to give blood.

At least 12 people remain in critical condition at the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, a spokeswoman said, and more than 500 others remain injured.

Governor Ricardo Rosselló has arrived at Muñiz Air National Guard Base, where Donald Trump is due to arrive in the next few minutes.

Rafael Lenin Lopez is one of the journalists also waiting for Air Force One.

Canadian authorities have identified two more victims of the Las Vegas shooting, Ashifa Kassam reports from Toronto.

CTV News has confirmed the identity of a third Canadian killed in the attacks: Calla Medig, of Jasper Alberta

“My heart is numb knowing such a tragedy struck our small community,” Tessa Mac of Jasper said in a Facebook post. “Heaven is an even brighter place now that they have you Calla.”
Another Canadian outlet, CBC, has spoken a Vegas bartender who, after coming across an injured Canadian who would later die from his gunshot wounds, spent more than five hours by his side, using his phone to break the news to his girlfriend and speak to his parents. “I couldn’t just leave him by himself,” she said.

The international aid group Oxfam has announced it is joining the recovery effort on Puerto Rico, and accused the Trump administration of a “slow and inadequate response” to the crisis.

“We are outraged at the slow and inadequate response the US government has mounted in Puerto Rico,” Abby Maxman, the president of Oxfam America, said in a statement.

“Clean water, food, fuel, electricity, and health care are in desperately short supply and quickly dwindling, and we’re hearing excuses and criticism from the administration instead of a cohesive and compassionate response.

“The US has more than enough resources to mobilize an emergency response but has failed to do so in a swift and robust manner.”

The group said it would pursue “a two-pronged response” of lobbying Congress and federal agencies to send more resources and waive barriers to that aid. Oxfam has also sent a team to assess and counter the risks of unsafe water, areas without shelter, and cholera and other diseases.

San Juan mayor accepts invitation to meet Trump

San Juan mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz has accepted an invitation to meet with Donald Trump, she has just announced in a statement.

“This is about saving lives, not about politics,” she says.

“I have been invited to attend a briefing with President Trump today while he visits Puerto Rico. I have accepted the invitation on behalf of the people of San Juan and out of respect for the American people represented by the office of the president of the United States.

I will use this opportunity to reiterate the primary message: this is about saving lives, not about politics; this is about giving the people of Puerto Rico the respect we deserve; and recognize the moral imperative to do both.

To save lives we need a robust and continuous supply chain of aid, we need to adapt standard operating procedures to local reality. And above all we need to cut the red tape.

Open channels of communication are always good to have but they must produce much needed results.

This is a humanitarian crisis and it must be treated with that sense of urgency. That is the only way to complete the only mission that matters: saving lives. That is what it is all about.”

Trump attacked Cruz at length over the weekend after she pleaded for help and criticized the administration’s characterization of Puerto Rico as a “good news story”.

“If anybody out there is listening to us, we are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency and the bureaucracy,” Cruz said on Friday.

The president then accused her of “poor leadership” and said critics of his administration, which hesitated to waive restrictions on shipping to the island, were “politically motivated ingrates”. On Tuesday morning he said Cruz had “come back a long way”.

Updated

CBS’s David Begnaud, on Puerto Rico since Maria made landfall there on 20 September, reports that the island has made a tiny improvement in its supply of electricity.

The president is due to arrive around 11am local time. Governor Ricardo Rosselló is scheduled to meet with him, as is Kenneth Mapp, governor of the US Virgin Islands.

Las Vegas shooting: 59 dead and 527 injured, officials say

A day after a gunman opened fire on a concert in Las Vegas, American officials are grappling with its aftermath – fighting to save lives in hospitals, struggling to reunite families, mourning and investigating – while also contending with a crisis off the mainland: the recovery of hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.

President Donald Trump is en route to the island early Tuesday morning, before any new updates from Nevada authorities on the Sunday night shooting. Here’s what we know:

  • A gunman killed 59 people and wounded 516 when he opened fire from a 32nd-floor hotel room into the crowd at a country music festival on the Las Vegas strip.
  • He had 23 guns in the room, including AR-15-style rifles, and another 19 and thousands of rounds at his home, in Mesquite, Nevada. He checked into the large, two-room suite on 28 September, and broke windows to fire outward.
  • Authorities named the suspect as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, a wealthy real-estate investor and gambler. Described by family as having no strong political or religious feelings, his motive remains unknown
  • Trump called the attack “an act of pure evil” on Monday, and said he would visit Las Vegas on Wednesday.
  • The White House resisted calls to consider new gun laws, saying it would be “premature” to discuss them. Republicans in Congress, set to loosen rules on silencers, delayed their plans.

Before departing for Puerto Rico on Tuesday, the president broached the shooting. “What happened in Las Vegas is in many was a miracle,” he said. “The police department has done such an incredible job, and we’ll be talking about gun laws as time goes by.”

Although police have not described the shooter’s mental health at all, the president called him “a sick man, a demented man, a lot of problems, I guess”.

“We’re looking into him very, very seriously. We’re dealing with a very very sick individual.”

On Puerto Rico, rescue and recovery teams are still struggling with the devastation on the island, where millions of people have limited or no access to safe water, electricity, shelter, or medicine.

  • At least 16 people have died since hurricane Maria made landfall as a category-four storm on 20 September.
  • The mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, pleaded for help, saying on Friday: “if anybody out there is listening to us, we are dying.”
  • Trump derided the mayor over the weekend, and said attacked critics who said his administration was slow to help Americans on the island, calling them “politically motivated ingrates”.
  • The governor, Ricardo Rosselló, said that in an optimistic scenario 80% of Puerto Rico could have power by the end of October. Overall recovery for the territory, which was struggling with a long-running financial crisis before the storm, could take a decade. Rosselló ordered an indefinite curfew to deter crime.

The president again defended the work of federal authorities – and again claimed that locals were not doing enough. He said Cruz has “come back a long way” but “we need their truck drivers to start driving trucks.”

In Texas and in Florida, we get an A+. And I’ll tell you what, I think we’ve done just as good in Puerto Rico, and it’s actually a much tougher situation. But now the roads are cleared, communications is starting to come back. We need their truck drivers to start driving trucks.

On a local level, they have to give us more help. But I will tell you, the first responders, the military, Fema, they have done an incredible job in Puerto Rico. And whether it’s her or anybody else, they’re all starting to say it. I appreciate very much the governor and his comments. He has said we have done an incredible job, and that’s the truth.

Updated

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