As more than 500 wounded flooded the hospitals of Las Vegas after the worst mass shooting in modern US history, electronic billboard ads urged people to give blood.
The response from the community has been overwhelming, with long lines of donors snaking out the doors -- sustained with offerings of pizza and cookies.
"Donors came after two in the morning when they received the news. The flow did not stop well until the evening," said Mitzy Edgecomb of United Blood Services, an agency that collects donated blood and supplies it to hospitals.
"Yesterday we collected 700 donations in the Las Vegas area. Well over 1,000 people attempted to donate. We are seeing numbers not seen in a very long time," Edgecomb said outside a blood drive center in suburban Las Vegas.
Tuesday morning, when the doors opened at 9:00 am, more than 100 people were waiting outside to give blood, and in the afternoon a dozen were still waiting.
A Salvation Army truck handed out free slices of pizza.
People not even wishing to donate showed up with water and homemade cookies.
"Anything like this brings a community together. People are good at heart and they want to do something to help at the time when they are slightly helpless," said Edgecomb.
She said she expects the flow to keep up through the weekend.
"We've met the needs at the hospitals where some of the victims were transported. We are replenishing that supply and preparing for the days and weeks ahead," she said.
'We love you'
At one blood drive center, Dianne Spence, 70, lay down on a cot next to her husband Richard.
She squeezes a rubber ball as a nurse inserts a needle into her arm. She is from Georgia and has lived in Las Vegas for 27 years.
She is a regular blood donor and already had an appointment for Tuesday, even before Sunday's carnage by a retired accountant named Stephen Paddock. He killed 58 people and himself, and wounded 527.
Spence kept her appointment "because it is a critical time and people need it."
She said she was proud of the way the people of Las Vegas are responding to this crisis.
"Hate is just a sad symptom of fear. People are in a very rough place today," she said. "I grew up in the south and we have a lot of hate. It's just sad, really sad."
One cot further over, Sammy Rangel is talking to the nurses.
He is wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "Las Vegas, We Love You" that does not quite hide all the tatoos on his body.
Rangel used to be the leader of a white supremacist gang in Chicago and spend 18 years in prison.
Then he founded an association called Life after Hate, which brings people like him together for social rehabilitation programs.
The motives of the shooter in Las Vegas are still not known.
Rangel said he is here to "counter the message of hate with love and compassion." And blood donations.
"This is where acts of hate and terror lose, because they're not designed to bring communities together and yet it seems that when these things happen, communities come together," said Rangel.
"It's counter-intuitive to what they're trying to accomplish, right?"
Douglas Fraser, a surgeon at University Medical Center, said he saw more than 100 patients come in after the shooting, including 20 in critical condition.
He said his people are trying to help both physical and psychological injuries, and the latter take longer to heal.
"The emotional strain is probably the highest right now," he said. "Right now we are just trying to help each other and the patients kind of get right through this."
"Some of these wounds will heal physically but the mental aftermath is going to be for some time," he said, adding victims' families members of would also have to deal with the trauma of mass shooting.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
MESQUITE, Nevada - In the quiet cul-de-sac where Stephen Paddock lived, even his immediate neighbors say they didn't know him.
Some say they never set eyes on the man accused of spraying an outdoor concert with bursts of gunfire from high above in a Las Vegas hotel window on Sunday, killing 58 and wounding more than 500, before shooting himself.
Tracing Paddock's footsteps in Mesquite, the Nevada desert retirement community about 90 miles (145 km) northeast of Las Vegas, provides scant clues about why, according to authorities, he carried out the worst mass shooting in recent U.S. history. Hardly anyone noticed the man.
"Nobody knew him. I literally never saw him," said a neighbor who lives two doors down from Paddock's home and who declined to be named. "The house was so quiet, we thought they were snowbirds," he added, referring to retirees who spent the winter months in warm-weather places like Mesquite.
Garbage cans were put out on the street before anyone else was even awake, leaving no opportunity for casual chats with neighbors living just feet away. Yard work was done by gardeners. Pizza came directly to the door, and as far as anyone knew, Paddock never took part in bingo or bocce, or any of the social activities provided by the retirement community.
By all accounts, Paddock was a man of few words who never sought to interact with others beyond his live-in companion, Marilou Danley, a 62-year-old former casino employee described by authorities as person of interest in the investigation.
Neighbors immediately next to Paddock's mustard-colored stucco home, landscaped with stones and desert plants, displayed a sign on their door: "We did not know him."
The mangled remains of Paddock's garage door sat in his driveway, after authorities searched the home on Monday, uncovering a cache of 19 firearms, explosives and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
Paddock, who worked as an apartment manager and aerospace industry worker over the years, was known as an avid gambler. He would venture out of his Mesquite home frequently to play poker at the local casinos, where regulars recalled his face but little more.
The 64-year-old would often stop at Starbucks, where baristas remembered him as quiet and "in his own world."
And according to one barista, Paddock appeared "rude" when he ordered a Mocha Frappucino for Danley, instead of letting her order for herself.
"He didn't let her talk," the employee said.
Paddock seemed more sociable to those who delivered him pizza from Domino's 14 times in recent months. A good tipper, Paddock paid cash and always ordered the same thing - two medium mushroom pizzas with extra cheese.
Sometimes he would tell the delivery person he was trying to lose weight and the pizza was only for his companion.
Domino's employee Jessie Givens recalled that Paddock would joke to her: "It's not fair! She gets to eat pizza - and I don't."
Danley, who was in the Philippines at the time of the attack, returned to the United States late on Tuesday, arriving in Los Angeles from Manila. She could reveal more clues about Paddock's motives when investigators interview her.
Paddock was known to have previous relationships, none of them recent.
Court records show that he got married in 1977. The couple separated in 1979 before their divorce was finalized in 1980 in Los Angeles County.
Five years later, Paddock married again, separating in 1989 and divorcing in 1990, also in Los Angeles County, according to court and public records.
In both cases, divorce papers cited irreconcilable differences. (Additional reporting By Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Frank McGurty and Nick Macfie)
source: news.abs-cbn.com
LAS VEGAS- The slot machines were still ringing and the drinks still flowing but the party didn't feel quite the same along the world-famous Las Vegas Strip on Monday evening, 24 hours after a gunman staged the bloodiest shooting in modern US history.
The somber mood was especially pronounced at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, where police say a retiree with an arsenal of assault rifles rained hundreds of bullets into a crowd of concert-goers below his room, killing at least 59 and injuring more than 500.
A hush had descended over the Mandalay hotel lobby that, in normal times, bustles with excitement at nearly every hour of the day or night. The shrieking gamblers, the bachelorettes with oversized cocktails, the high-rollers spruced up for an expensive evening out, all were nowhere to be seen.
Instead, a few solitary gamblers sat with glassy eyes in front of slot machines in the lobby. Four security officers unceremoniously escorted a Reuters reporter out when she tried to interview a casino guest.
"It's eerie. People are trying to enjoy it, but there's a cloud hanging over the city right now," said Greg Hartnett, 31, who had arrived for his first visit to Vegas earlier in the day.
Hartnett, who lives near the site of the 2007 massacre of 32 people at Virginia Tech university, said Sunday's rampage reminded him of that bloodbath.
"It really shows the dark side of humanity," he said.
Vegas cabbie Alex Sanchez said his passengers were much less chatty than usual, and there were many fewer cars on the road.
"People come here for an escape. They want to leave their stresses behind," Sanchez said. "And this really puts a damper on it."
Despite the overall gloominess, people along the Strip appeared more ready than on a more carefree day to hold a door or share a quiet smile with strangers.
"I've been thanking every police officer I see," said Hartnett. "I feel like it's bringing people together.
Sheriffs deputies and their gleaming white motorcycles were parked on the sidewalk in a show of force, perhaps intended to reassure anxious tourists.
"Thanks for last night, guys," shouted one passing woman.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
The gunman who fired on Las Vegas concertgoers from more than 1,000 feet away on Sunday may have used fully automatic weapons - or guns legally modified to act like them - that allowed him to shoot a hail of bullets into the crowd of 22,000 people.
A U.S. law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters authorities believe 64-year-old Stephen Paddock had at least two such weapons when he fired from his 32nd-floor hotel room, killing at least 59 people and injuring more than 500.
The rat-a-tat sound of the Las Vegas shooter's gunfire prompted police at the scene to report the gunman was using an "automatic" weapon - a term often used to describe a fully automatic gun that can fire as many rounds as its magazine, drum or belt holds by pulling and holding the trigger.
Those weapons have been largely outlawed for three decades, though Paddock could also have used legal or illegal means to alter semi-automatic rifles, which fire a round every time the trigger is pulled.
"From the audio, that is not someone who has a traditional semi-automatic rifle firing it in its normal condition," said David Chipman, a former Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent who advises the gun control group Americans for Responsible Solutions. "Either it's a machine gun or it's been modified. I don't believe a human can do that with his finger."
Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said investigators found 16 weapons in Paddock's suite at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. He added that officials believe at least some of the guns were modified, possibly to allow for more rapid fire.
It was not clear when or how Paddock obtained the weapons. Chris Sullivan, owner of the Guns & Guitars shop near Paddock's home in Mesquite, Nevada, confirmed Paddock had legally purchased firearms from the store but did not offer more detail.
In 1986, Congress barred civilians from buying or selling fully automatic weapons made after that date, though individuals can legally possess older weapons after passing a background check and obtaining a special permit.
There are about 176,000 pre-1986 machine guns registered with the U.S. government that can be legally transferred, and they typically cost tens of thousands of dollars.
But there are also less expensive legal products that can allow semi-automatic rifles such as the AR-15, which are much more widely available, to fire hundreds of rounds per minute.
A "bump stock," for example, replaces a semi-automatic rifle's stock, which rests against the shoulder to provide stability and absorb recoil.
The bump stock causes the gun's recoil to press against the shooter's finger after each shot, firing rounds much more quickly than possible by pulling it manually.
The website for one such product, Slide Fire, shows several videos in which shooters launch multiple rounds per second in bursts that sound almost indistinguishable from automatic fire. Reviewers have reported that the product permits a shooter to go through hundreds of rounds every minute.
The company did not return requests for comment.
'SOUPED-UP SEMI'?
Such devices are not outlawed because the trigger is still pulled for each round, even though the rate is faster than possible using only one's finger.
"There's very little difference between a souped-up semi automatic and a fully automatic," said Mike McLively, a policy expert with Americans for Responsible Solutions.
Paddock could also have illegally converted semi-automatic rifles into fully automatic guns, a process made easier by the presence of guides uploaded to the internet.
Nevada law lets residents own machine guns, if they are permitted under federal law. The state does not require licenses, registration or a waiting period for firearms, including semi-automatic rifles.
Sunday's shooting prompted renewed calls from Democrats for tighter gun laws, though it is unlikely the Republican-controlled Congress will take up such measures.
Shares in gunmakers American Outdoor Brands and Sturm, Ruger & Co rose 3.21 percent and 3.48 percent, respectively, on Monday. Gun stocks often spike following mass shootings on fears of stricter gun control.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
