Not surprising at all. Ask any lawyer in a situation where a car accident occurs on a crowded street, and there aren't but two witnesses who actually saw it and can be contacted and questioned. Odds are, one's going to swear the light was red and the other's going to swear the light was green, each will be as honest as the day is long and speaking in absolutely good faith, each will be describing it exactly as he or she remembers it, and that's about size of it. It's just the way of the world. Only one thing can be the truth, yet each witness is being absolutely truthful -- about his or her recollection of it, not necessarily what actually happened.
In the Las Vegas shooting, you had the shooter (who's not saying too much or answering questions right now), a couple of security guards, one or two maintenance guys, some Las Vegas cops, each member of an an entire SWAT team, hotel management, and the front desk staff involved. Each of them will have a unique individual perspective, they will each remember things differently. Each will have been, at the time, observing from a different vantage point in the hotel: some on the 32nd floor, some in the lobby. The only way we could know as close to the whole truth as is relevant is if somebody had been standing right next to the shooter at the time he started shooting, and lived to tell the tale.
But it didn't work out that way, and this investigation is going to be relying very heavily on security video, and reconciling the various individual perspectives and versions of the story.
It could be a few more weeks before even the cops get their story straight -- and that's just their story. There'll be other stories. Regardless of blame or fault, I don't see something like this happening at Mandalay Bay, and MGM Hotels and Resorts notgetting the living crap sued out of it by multiple plaintiffs as a consequence. MGM will have their narrative of how it happened. Each of the other litigants will have theirnarrative of how it happened.
Meanwhile, we need to to be careful with rumors. I know we all want answers, but if we go by bits and pieces and stuff that supposed to have been leaked, then we're going to have a screwed up story. Each of us. There would be so many of those floating around that we could never know, with full confidence, the whole truth about it; much as has always been the case with the Kennedy assassination. We could be arguing forever about how it happened, with no one ever really knowing.
I'm already aware of the timeline discrepancies, and the question of was the one security guard shot before or after Paddock started shooting into the crowd. I've already heard the questions about how could he get a dozen or so assault rifles into a 32nd floor hotel room through a large lobby and up an elevator without being seen by hotel staff. They're picking apart Mr. Paddock's private life so thoroughly that last week, I saw a TV news report by a reputable network where they even interviewed his hair stylist.
We need to step away; let the investigators do their thing without a lot of oddball tabloid tidbits getting thrown into it, and a lot of oddball leaked items about the investigation being dribbled out here and there with no way to verify the truth of them; and get a nice, clean, accurate report at the end, with all conflicts and questions resolved as best as as possible.
That's what I want, anyway. Tell me when it's over. And I'll decide then how much or how little detail I need.
Any books written about it in the next six months is going to be paperback pop pulp characterization, like that run of books that was put out about the Susan Smith tragedy in South Carolina in early 1995.
I'd figure on at least a year or two before anything that's published about this tragedy can be considered accurate and authoritative.
In the Las Vegas shooting, you had the shooter (who's not saying too much or answering questions right now), a couple of security guards, one or two maintenance guys, some Las Vegas cops, each member of an an entire SWAT team, hotel management, and the front desk staff involved. Each of them will have a unique individual perspective, they will each remember things differently. Each will have been, at the time, observing from a different vantage point in the hotel: some on the 32nd floor, some in the lobby. The only way we could know as close to the whole truth as is relevant is if somebody had been standing right next to the shooter at the time he started shooting, and lived to tell the tale.
But it didn't work out that way, and this investigation is going to be relying very heavily on security video, and reconciling the various individual perspectives and versions of the story.
It could be a few more weeks before even the cops get their story straight -- and that's just their story. There'll be other stories. Regardless of blame or fault, I don't see something like this happening at Mandalay Bay, and MGM Hotels and Resorts notgetting the living crap sued out of it by multiple plaintiffs as a consequence. MGM will have their narrative of how it happened. Each of the other litigants will have theirnarrative of how it happened.
Meanwhile, we need to to be careful with rumors. I know we all want answers, but if we go by bits and pieces and stuff that supposed to have been leaked, then we're going to have a screwed up story. Each of us. There would be so many of those floating around that we could never know, with full confidence, the whole truth about it; much as has always been the case with the Kennedy assassination. We could be arguing forever about how it happened, with no one ever really knowing.
I'm already aware of the timeline discrepancies, and the question of was the one security guard shot before or after Paddock started shooting into the crowd. I've already heard the questions about how could he get a dozen or so assault rifles into a 32nd floor hotel room through a large lobby and up an elevator without being seen by hotel staff. They're picking apart Mr. Paddock's private life so thoroughly that last week, I saw a TV news report by a reputable network where they even interviewed his hair stylist.
We need to step away; let the investigators do their thing without a lot of oddball tabloid tidbits getting thrown into it, and a lot of oddball leaked items about the investigation being dribbled out here and there with no way to verify the truth of them; and get a nice, clean, accurate report at the end, with all conflicts and questions resolved as best as as possible.
That's what I want, anyway. Tell me when it's over. And I'll decide then how much or how little detail I need.
Any books written about it in the next six months is going to be paperback pop pulp characterization, like that run of books that was put out about the Susan Smith tragedy in South Carolina in early 1995.
I'd figure on at least a year or two before anything that's published about this tragedy can be considered accurate and authoritative.
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