The first victims of the Las Vegas shootings which left at least 58 people dead and over 515 injured have been identified.
They include a 29-year-old nurse who saved his wife’s life by lying over her to protect her from a hail of bullets, and a 23-year-old Canadian man, who was at the country music festival where the shootings happened in the final hours before he was due to return home.
Police were today beginning the difficult task of processing the massive crime scene and notifying next of kin who have started to gather in the Nevada city.
Thousands of concert-goers ran for cover as Stephen Paddock, 64, fired round after round of bullets from his 32nd floor hotel room on the edge of the famous Las Vegas Strip, onto a crowd enjoying the finale of a three day country music festival. More than 22,000 people were caught up in the panic.
Paddock is believed to have killed himself as police prepared to storm his Mandalay Bay hotel room. They found an arsenal of more than ten assault rifles stashed inside.
While President Donald Trump branded Paddock “pure evil”, the attack has sparked fresh debate in America over its gun laws. Nevada has among the most relaxed attitude to gun ownership in the United States.
Within hours of the shootings, investigators had started piecing together scraps of evidence in an attempt to explain what drove the lone gunman to carry out America’s deadliest mass shooting of modern times.
Paddock, who lived in a retirement community around 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, was said to have had no links to terrorist organisations and was not known to local police. His brother, Eric Paddock, said the shootings were “like an asteroid just fell on top of our family”.
He added: “He’s not an avid guy guy at all,” he added. “He’s just a guy who lived in a house in Mesquite, drove down and gambled in Las Vegas. He did stuff. Ate burritos.”
He later confirmed that their estranged father was a bank robber who was once on the FBI’s ‘Most Wanted’ list.
Among the first victims to be identified was Tennessee nurse Sonny Melton, who threw himself over his wife Helen in a bid to protect her.
She said: "He saved my life. He grabbed me from behind and started running when I felt him get shot in the back.
“I want everyone to know what a kind hearted loving man he was but at this point I can barely breathe.”
Canadian tourist Jordan McIldoon, 23, was attending the country music festival with his girlfriend when he was shot and killed. His parents, Al and Angela McIldoon, said he was within hours of returning home to continue his apprenticeship as a mechanic.
Last night house minority leader Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, led calls for action on gun control in the aftermath of the shooting. In a letter to Republican speaker Paul Ryan, she wrote: “Congress has a moral duty to address this horrific and heartbreaking epidemic.”
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