Trump on Vegas Shooting: US 'Cannot Be Defined by Evil That Threatens Us'
President hails first responders, says there's still no known motive for the attack but that investigators are 'looking very hard' for answers
LAS VEGAS — President Donald Trump, after visiting victims of a mass shooting in Las Vegas, said Wednesday that there was still no known motive for the attack but that investigators were "looking very hard" for answers. Trump, speaking alongside first lady Melania Trump, praised emergency and medical personnel who responded to the massacre, in which at least 58 people were killed and more than 500 were wounded. "What I saw today is just an incredible tribute to professionalism," Trump said. "It makes you proud to be an American." During prepared remarks, in front of police officers and Nevada politicians on a stage with the president at local police headquarters, Trump said, "We cannot be defined by the evil that threatens us," noting that "Americans defied death and hatred with love and with courage" in selflessly coming to the aid of others at peril to their own lives during the attack. The shooting happened Sunday night on the Las Vegas Strip, a popular American tourism destination. Police said Stephen Paddock, 64, from his 32nd-floor room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, fired on a crowd of 22,000 people attending a country music festival. Authorities said Paddock fatally shot himself as police moved in. "He's a sick, demented man," Trump said of the gunman during the meeting with first responders at the command center of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. The shooting has reignited a decades-old debate about guns in America. The president, when asked at the hospital about gun control, replied, "We're not going to talk about that today." Trump landed in Las Vegas as FBI agents interviewed Paddock's girlfriend, Marilou Danley, for any clues as to what drove him to commit the mass shooting. Danley apparently was in the Philippines at the time of the attack and took a flight back to the United States late Tuesday. She reportedly has told authorities she had no involvement with the planning of the shooting, but LVMPD Sheriff Joe Lombardo said Danley was a person of interest in the criminal investigation of the attack. U.S. security officials also said investigators were examining a $100,000 wire transfer that Paddock made to an account in the Philippines in the days before the shooting. Authorities said the shooting was clearly premeditated. "The fact that he had the type of weaponry and the amount of weaponry in that room, it was pre-planned extensively and I'm pretty sure he evaluated everything he did in his actions, which is troublesome," Lombardo told reporters Tuesday. Investigators found 23 guns inside Paddock's hotel room and 12 "bump stock" devices that can enable a rifle to fire continuously. The gunman also set up multiple cameras looking into the hallway outside the room, apparently to monitor the police response. Another 26 guns were found at two of Paddock's homes in Nevada. Lombardo has expressed confidence that his investigators, along with federal authorities, will determine Paddock's motivation for carrying out the worst mass shooting in modern American history.