Las Vegas Shooting: FBI Chief Says Motive will Be Released by First Anniversary

FBI Las Vegas Division Special Agent in Charge Aaron Rouse speaks during a news conference at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department headquarters to brief members of the media on a mass shooting in Las Vegas on Oct. 4, 2017. Ethan Miller/Getty Images

The chief of the FBI Las Vegas office has revealed that the agency will possibly release their report on the massacre before October next year.

“Now, that’s a long time for some people, but speaking for the FBI, that’s light speed, all right?”, Special Agent in Charge Aaron Rouse told Las Vegas Review-Journal in an interview on Dec. 20.

Rouse said the report will focus on why Stephen Paddock gunned down 58 people in Las Vegas in early October.

“Ours is focusing a large part on the why, OK? Which is what everybody wants to know,” he said during the interview at the FBI’s Las Vegas office.

Two members of the FBI work at the scene of the mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas on Oct. 3, 2017. The gunman, identified as Stephen Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nevada, allegedly opened fire from a room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the music festival, leaving at least 58 people dead and over 500 injured. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The motive behind the tragic shooting which left 58 concertgoers dead and more than 500 injured has not been determined. However, the chief said Paddock’s motivation has not been linked to any sort of affiliation or ideology, and evidence still suggests the gunman was acting on his own, reported the newspaper.

The FBI has interviewed upward of 400 people worldwide who are thought to have connections to the gunman and have brought in “various psychological and sociological” experts, and 400 different specialists to work on the case.

(L-R) Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo shows a timeline of events from Sunday's mass shooting as U.S. Sen Dean Heller (R-NV) and FBI Las Vegas Division Special Agent in Charge Aaron Rouse look on during a news conference at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department headquarters to brief members of the media on the mass shooting in Las Vegas on Oct. 4, 2017. Ethan Miller/Getty Images

“As I sit here today, I believe that we are learning as much as we possibly can about why the subject did what they did,” Rouse said during the interview. “I believe that there is one person and one person alone to blame for what happened on One October, and that is Stephen Paddock.”

Rouse said it took investigators 14 days to document evidence from the Route 91 Harvest festival venue—which is about 15 acres large—and it took 13 days to document Paddock’s 32nd-floor Mandalay Bay suite and hotel hallway. All important items found during the investigations have been sent to the FBI’s central lab in Virginia.

“We’re going to have, I think, the best digital schematic of what happened and where it happened and how it happened that you can come up with,” Rouse told the newspaper.

FBI Las Vegas Division Special Agent in Charge Aaron Rouse speaks during a news conference at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department headquarters to brief members of the media on a mass shooting in Las Vegas on Oct. 4, 2017. Ethan Miller/Getty Images

The FBI chief added that they had filed 12 federal search warrants and issued over 500 federal grand jury subpoenas during the initial hours and days of the investigation. He also said that the agency has about 22,000 hours of surveillance and cellphone footage to comb through, along with about 250,000 separate photos.

“We didn’t leave anything uncovered,” Rouse told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “And again, the casinos, with their support, let us track down a lot of information of who may have had contact with that person. And it was very helpful to us.”

Rouse said he does not expect the FBI to brief or update the public on the investigation until the report is released next year.