Route 91 Harvest Festival Shooting

Author: Jewls Krueger

On the night of October 1, 2017, a 64 year old retired accountant named Stephen Paddock opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, raining down more than 1,000 rounds on a crowd of roughly 22,000 country music fans attending the final night of the Route 91 Harvest Festival across the street.

The attack killed 60 people and wounded more than 400 others by gunfire, with hundreds more injured in the panicked rush for safety. It remains the deadliest mass shooting committed by a single gunman in modern American history.

Stephen Paddock and the Festival

Stephen Craig Paddock was born on April 9, 1953 in Clinton, Iowa, and grew up largely in Southern California. By 2017, he was retired, wealthy, and living in a quiet golf course community in Mesquite, Nevada with his longtime girlfriend Marilou Danley. He was a high stakes video poker player and a regular at Las Vegas casinos, especially Mandalay Bay, where he visited as often as twice a month.

Paddock had no criminal record and no documented mental health history. To friends, family, and neighbors he seemed unremarkable. In the year leading up to the shooting, however, he had legally and quietly amassed an arsenal of 33 firearms. Despite years of investigation, the FBI was never able to determine a clear motive for the attack.

The Route 91 Harvest Festival was a three day country music festival that had been held each fall since 2014 at the Las Vegas Village, a 15 acre open air concert venue across Las Vegas Boulevard from Mandalay Bay. The 2017 festival was headlined by country star Jason Aldean.

The Attack

Surveillance footage showing Paddock bringing guns to the suite -Public Domain

On September 25, 2017, six days before the shooting, Paddock checked into a corner suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel under his real name. Over the following days, he brought 23 firearms, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and other equipment up to the room in a series of suitcases. Several of his AR-15 style rifles had been modified with "bump stocks," which allowed them to fire at a rate close to that of fully automatic weapons.

On the night of October 1, Paddock used a hammer to smash out two windows of his suite. At 10:05 p.m., during Jason Aldean's set, he began firing into the festival crowd below. The gunfire continued in repeated bursts for approximately 10 minutes. Concertgoers initially mistook the sound for fireworks before realizing what was happening and scrambling for any available cover.

The shooting killed 58 people that night, with two additional victims dying years later from their injuries, bringing the official death toll to 60. More than 400 people were shot or struck by shrapnel, and the total number of injured, including those hurt in the chaos of fleeing the venue, exceeded 850.

When Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officers and a Mandalay Bay security officer made entry to the suite, they found Paddock dead from a self inflicted gunshot wound. They also recovered the 23 firearms he had brought to the room, with another 19 firearms later found at his Mesquite home.

The Investigation

Diagram of the shooting -Creative Commons: Mliu92

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and the FBI conducted a massive joint investigation into the shooting that lasted years. Investigators ruled out terrorism, mental illness, and radicalization as factors and were ultimately unable to pinpoint a motive. The FBI's behavioral analysis report, released in 2019, theorized that Paddock sought notoriety and wanted to mirror the public attention given to his father, a longtime FBI Top Ten fugitive who had robbed banks.

Paddock's girlfriend Marilou Danley, who had been out of the country at the time of the shooting, cooperated fully with investigators and was never charged. The attack directly led to a federal ban on bump stock devices, which was issued by the Department of Justice in 2018. Unfortunately the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the ban in June 2024 on procedural grounds, though several states have since enacted their own bans. MGM Resorts International, which owned the Mandalay Bay and the festival venue, reached a $800 million settlement with victims and survivors in 2020.

The Site Today

Route 91 Memorial Wall -Creative Commons: Noah Wulf

The Las Vegas Village festival grounds at 3901 Las Vegas Boulevard South sat empty for years after the shooting. In December 2022, MGM Resorts sold 13 of the 15 acres of the property to the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, while donating the remaining 2 acres in the northeast corner for a permanent memorial. As of 2026, that memorial is in the planning and design stages but has not yet been built.

In the meantime, two community memorials honor the victims. The Las Vegas Community Healing Garden, located at 1015 South Casino Center Boulevard in downtown Las Vegas, was built by community volunteers in just three days and dedicated on October 6, 2017. It features 58 trees, one for each victim killed that night, surrounding a large oak called the Tree of Life. A second memorial garden sits on the grounds of the Clark County Government Center.

It has become common practice for guests' rooms to be searched prior to music festivals on the Vegas strip, including the festivals that take place next to Circus Circus.

The Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino remains in operation. The 32nd floor suite Paddock used has been reconfigured, and its room number was changed. Please be respectful of survivors, victims' families, and visitors to the memorial sites, and follow all posted signage and guidelines when visiting.