The gunman behind the Las Vegas shooting massacre may have considered staging attacks in other cities, according to multiple reports.
NBC News, citing multiple unnamed senior law enforcement officials, reported Thursday that Stephen Craig Paddock, who took his own life Sunday night in Las Vegas before law enforcement forcibly entered his hotel room, also made a hotel reservation in Chicago and may have targeted the Lollapalooza music festival for an attack. ABC News also reported Paddock’s hotel reservation.
USA Today and the gossip site TMZ specifically reported that he reserved two rooms “facing” and “overlooking” the music festival, respectively, during its scheduled dates, though it’s not known that he ever checked into the rooms or even traveled to Chicago.
Paddock’s reservations began Aug. 1 and 3, according to the reports, and Lollapalooza began on Aug. 3. TMZ published what is supposedly a picture of a computer screen in the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago showing Paddock’s reservation. The outlet also noted that 400,000 people, including Malia Obama, attended the event in total over four days.
According to Las Vegas officials, 22,000 people were in attendance at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas when Paddock allegedly began firing into the crowd from his 32nd floor hotel room in the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, hundreds of yards away.
ABC and NBC News both reported, citing unnamed law enforcement officials, that Paddock may have also considered sites in Boston, though the outlets did not provide more detail.
An unnamed law enforcement source also told NBC News, in a story published Tuesday, that police were investigating whether Paddock considered attacking an earlier music festival in Las Vegas, the Life Is Beautiful festival, which occurred Sept. 22-24.
