Charges Have Been Filed in the Case of the Deadly Las Vegas Mass Shooting

Recently, I gave you an update on the investigation into the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas.

Other than the shooter, Stephen Paddock, two persons of interest were named in search warrant records unsealed on Tuesday – Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, and an Arizona man by the name of Douglas Haig.

Danley was eventually cleared of wrongdoing, but according to CBS News, Haig has been charged.

Haig was charged on Friday with manufacturing armor-piercing bullets and selling them to Paddock.

Unfired armor-piercing bullets were found in Paddock’s Mandalay Bay hotel room. Those bullets had Haig’s fingerprints on them. There was also a box with Haig’s name and address.

The records don’t say if the ammunition was used in the attack. Haig was charged shortly before holding a news conference Friday where he said didn’t notice anything suspicious when he sold 720 rounds of ammunition to Stephen Paddock in the weeks before the attack that killed 58 people.

“I couldn’t detect anything wrong with this guy,” Haig told reporters this week. “He told me exactly what he wanted. I handed him a box with the ammunition in it, and he paid me and he left.”

It seems like a simple business transaction, except Haig, a 55-year old aerospace engineer, who had been selling ammunition for 25 years, as a “hobby,” didn’t have a license to manufacture armor-piercing ammo.

Haig had apparently met Paddock at a gun show weeks before the shooting, so it’s not as if they had a long-standing relationship.

Paddock was looking to purchase tracer ammunition, but Haig didn’t have the amount he was looking for, so they set up a meeting in Haig’s Mesa, Arizona home.

Haig said he was shocked and sickened when a federal agent informed him of the massacre 11 hours after it unfolded.

“I had no contribution to what Paddock did,” Haig said, adding that there was nothing unusual about the type or quantity of ammunition Paddock bought. “I had no way to see into his mind.”

That’s true. According to Haig, when he met Paddock, the man was well-dressed and polite – not the image some who had dealt with Haig on a more regular basis have described.

The fact that we all now know about Haig is because his name was mistakenly revealed, after a failure to redact that information in the court documents.

The box in Paddock’s hotel room that contained Haig’s name and address was the box given to Paddock to carry the 720 rounds of tracer ammo he’d purchased.

Haig said Paddock told him that “he was going to go out to the desert to put on a light show, either with or for his friends. I can’t remember whether he used the word ‘with’ or ‘for.’ But he said that he was going out at night to shoot it with friends.”

Now, he’s reaping the results of having his name connected to what is being called the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

Besides the press attention, he says he’s also receiving death threats. He’s closed down his ammunition business and just wants it to go away. He’s not planning on any legal action, due to his name being made public.

The October 1 shooting resulted in 58 dead and hundreds injured, before Paddock, in the throes of whatever madness had overtaken him, killed himself.

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