MESQUITE, NV – OCTOBER 02: A general view of the house in the Sun City Mesquite community where suspected Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock lived, October 2, 2017 in Mesquite, Nevada. Paddock allegedly opened fire from a room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino onto the Route 91 music festival in Las Vegas, leaving at least 58 people dead and over 500 injured. According to reports, Paddock killed himself at the scene. Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images/AFP
Authorities said Monday they had recovered a weapons cache including firearms, explosives and ammunition from a house owned by Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock, as they upped the death toll from the attack to 59.
Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said officers searching the house in Mesquite, Nevada recovered “in excess of 18 additional firearms, some explosives and several thousand rounds of ammo, along with some electronic devices we’re evaluating at this point.”
Lombardo said the death toll from the Sunday night assault on an open-air concert on the Vegas Strip had risen to 59, while 527 people had been injured.
He said law enforcement were working four separate crime scenes: Paddock’s room at the Mandalay Bay hotel, the concert venue, the gunman’s house in Mesquite, and another house he owns in northern Nevada which a SWAT team was poised to raid.
The arsenal uncovered in Mesquite comes on top of at least 16 firearms discovered in the Vegas hotel room, from which Paddock launched the deadly assault before killing himself.
Lombardo said investigators had discovered several pounds of an explosive called tannerite in the Mesquite home, as well as ammonia nitrate, a type of fertilizer, in the gunman’s car.
Asked if they had discovered anything to bolster the claim of responsibility by the Islamic State group, Lombardo replied:
“Good for them — no, we have no evidence of that.”
