Vegas shooter booked hotels rooms overlooking Lollapalooza

By Bill Dwyer For Chronicle Media

Celebrity and entertainment website TMZ is reporting that Las Vegas mass killer Stephen Paddock booked two rooms overlooking the massive Lollapalooza musical festival in Chicago’s Grant Park this past August. (Photo by Katrina Barber (C3Presents Marketing)/Lollapalooza 2017)

 

Celebrity and entertainment website TMZ is reporting that Las Vegas mass killer Stephen Paddock booked two rooms overlooking the massive Lollapalooza musical festival in Chicago’s Grant Park this past August.

The website article includes a screen capture of what is purportedly from a reservation computer at the Blackstone Hotel. That location on South Michigan Avenue is directly across the street from Grant Park, overlooking the Lollapalooza main stage area as well as the main entrance/exit to the festival.

The non-bylined TMZ article stated “We’re told Paddock specifically requested both rooms be a ‘view room’ which only face Grant Park, where the concert was being held.”

Paddock was scheduled to arrive Aug. 1 on one reservation and Aug. 3 on the other. Both reservations had checkouts on Aug. 6, the final day of the festival. TMZ says sources they spoke with say Paddock did not show up for either reservation.

Among the people who attended this year’s Lollapalooza were former president Barack Obama’s daughter Malia Obama.

The potential for far greater carnage than that at the Las Vegas music concert is obvious. While the Route 91 Harvest country music festival in Las Vegas had 22,000 attendees the final night, more than 400,000 people attended the four-day 2017 Lollapalooza event, on average approximately five times the daily crowd in Las Vegas.

While the 21-story Blackstone Hotel is far shorter than the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, where Paddock fired from the 32nd floor, the Chicago hotel is considerably closer to the Lollapalooza site.

Authorities say Paddock was approximately 400 yards from the festival stage in Las Vegas. The Blackstone is located directly across the street from Grant Park.

 

Chicago Police Department chief communications officer Anthony Guglielmi on Thursday would say only that the CPD was aware of the TMZ report.

 

“We are aware of the media reports and have been in communication with our federal partners,” Guglielmi said in a Twitter post. “As you saw earlier this week the city conducts extensive public safety planning and training around major events, in close coordination with our law enforcement partners, to ensure public safety.”

In a press conference on Wednesday, Clark County, Nev. Sheriff Joe Lombardo said his investigators believed Paddock’s attack “was pre-planned extensively.”

“I’m pretty sure that he evaluated everything that he did in his actions, which is troublesome,” Lombardo said.

While little else is known about any plans Paddock may have had for Chicago, the sheer effort required to surreptitiously transport a dozen semi-automatic rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition from Nevada to Chicago, either by private vehicle or plane, would have been daunting. Chicago is also far less tolerant of firearms than Nevada, which has no regulation of ownership and transport of fire arms.

Paddock, who lived in a retirement community 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas in Mesquite, Nev., made frequent trips to Las Vegas to gamble and was clearly very familiar and comfortable with the environs around the Las Vegas Strip. He was able to transport his cache of 19 weapons- reportedly stored in 10 suitcases- largely unobserved via his private automobile.

It is unknown whether Paddock had ever actually been to downtown Chicago. But he reportedly made at least three prior visits to the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas before his murderous Oct. 1 attack, something that would have been greatly complicated by required repeated travel to Chicago.

Ironically Lollapalooza’s final act on Sunday, Aug. 6, the hugely popular Arcade Fire indie rock band from Montreal, told their audience, “There’s so much poison in the air. We need love and peace.”

 

 

 

 

— Vegas shooter booked hotels rooms overlooking Lollapalooza —