Nowhere To Run Nowhere To Hide

America counts the cost of its deadliest shooting ever after a pensioner let rip on concertgoers from 32 storeys up

- Jane Vorster

IT’S happened again. Every time there’s a mass shooting on US soil it’s a cue for lots of hand-wringing and heated debates about gun laws, but nothing ever changes. Now the country is reeling from another attack – its worst ever.

Investigators are still trying to make sense of it. Stephen Paddock doesn’t fit the profile of your average terror mastermind. He was a pensioner and at age 64 spent his days at a retirement village in the state of Nevada. He didn’t seem to nurse any grudges, didn’t appear to hold extreme political views and his only brush with the law had been a parking ticket – in short, he didn’t look as if he could hurt a fly.

And yet at the time of going to print America was reeling – from a room on the 32nd floor at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the famed Las Vegas strip, this seemingly harmless old guy had fired round after round of bullets into a crowd as he carried out the US’ deadliest shooting attack.