Unsealed search warrants reveal new details about the Las Vegas massacre

REUTERS/Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus

Law enforcement officers are shown on Las Vegas Boulevard South on October 2, 2017, after a mass shooting during a music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada.

• Newly unsealed search warrants show that investigators trying to piece together the details of the deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas have not yet found a motive.
• The shooter, Stephen Paddock, opened fire on the Route 91 Harvest country music festival from his 32nd-floor hotel room on October 1, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds more.
• Police searched two Nevada homes Paddock owned and found a cache of weapons and ammunition. They found the same in his hotel room, along with three cell phones, one of which was locked and could not be accessed, the documents said.

Hundreds of pages of search warrant documents related to the deadly Las Vegas mass shooting were unsealed on Friday. The documents reveal that police investigators have not yet found a motive for the October 1 massacre that left 58 people dead and hundreds injured.

Gunman Stephen Paddock fired on concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival from his 32nd-floor suite at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino. Police searched Paddock's room, his vehicle, and two homes he owned in Reno and in Mesquite, Nevada, where they found a cache of weapons.

Inside his hotel room, investigators found two unlocked cell phones. "Neither contained significant information that allowed investigators to determine the full scope of Stephen Paddock's planning and preparation for the attack," the documents said.

A third cell phone, which was locked, could not be accessed, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The newspaper also said investigators identified an email inbox belonging to Paddock that contained a message from a Gmail account officials believe was related to Paddock's preparations for the attack.

The message read in part: "for a thrill try out bumpfire ar's with 100 round magazine," an apparent reference to the "bump stock" device police say that Paddock affixed to a number of the firearms found in his room.

Ten pages of the search warrant documents remained sealed ahead of a Nevada state court hearing scheduled for Tuesday.

Law-enforcement officials believe the shooting was meticulously planned, and that after Paddock checked into the Mandalay Bay three days prior, he brought weapons and multiple rounds of ammunition to his room.

Paddock also set up cameras in the hallway outside the room. He fired more than 200 rounds through his room door and then killed himself before police arrived.