WASHINGTON — After a gunman killed 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School seven years ago, the FBI released 1,500 pages of documents from its investigation.
Its report on the 2017 massacre in Las Vegas was just three pages.
The brevity prompted disbelief and disappointment from survivors and relatives of victims. Even President Donald Trump said he was surprised, though he said he understood the FBI had not determined a motive in the Vegas shooting.
“There’s disappointment that there’s no answers — a reason a man would go into a hotel and kill innocent, beautiful souls,” said Lisa Fine of Sacramento, California, who survived the attack that killed 58 people and injured nearly 900 others when shots were fired from a hotel window into a concert crowd.
Fine recalled bullets whizzing past while she ran to safety.
“Would answers help us avoid this in the future? So that no one else has to be in a mass shooting? We’re all talking about prevention,” she said.
Close to 16 months after the massacre, the FBI’s long-awaited report — released Tuesday — did little to shed light on the investigation and left its main question about motive unanswered.
“They were unable to find a real reason, other than that obviously he was sick, and they didn’t know it,” Trump said in an interview with The Daily Caller. “So, I was a little surprised and a lot disappointed that they weren’t able to find the reason, because you’d like to find a reason for that and stop it.”
The report compiled by the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit found that gunman Stephen Paddock sought notoriety in the attack, but it cited no “single or clear motivating factor” to explain why he opened fire from his suite in a high-rise casino hotel on 22,000 people attending the open-air concert.
Aaron Rouse, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Las Vegas office, defended his agency’s handling of the investigation — calling it a “herculean” effort.
