Trauma, and Red Tape, in Las Vegas

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/insider/trauma-and-red-tape-in-las-vegas.html

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LAS VEGAS — The slot machines and blackjack tables are filling up again at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, a golden tower on the southern end of the Vegas Strip. It’s taken days for any sense of normalcy to return to the place where last Sunday, an itinerant gambler, Stephen Paddock, used assault rifles to rain bullets down on a country music festival, killing 58 and injuring more than 500, one of the deadliest mass shootings in United States history.

I arrived in town a little more than 12 hours after Mr. Paddock’s deadly rampage, which ended when he fatally shot himself in the head. The Mandalay Bay, which I’ve visited several times as an off-and-on boxing writer, was as quiet as I’d ever seen it. Barely anyone was gambling. People were milling about the lobby, some trying to get back into rooms they had been evacuated from the night before. Others waited to check in for what was supposed to be a fun-filled trip.

Along with more than a dozen other New York Times journalists dispatched here, I immediately hopped into what has become an all too familiar routine of covering mass shootings. We had to piece together everything we could about what had happened that night. That meant interviewing people who were in the hotel or at the country music concert. And trying to chat up hotel employees, who might be able to offer any details about Mr. Paddock and his stay here: How did he sneak in around two dozen rifles? Did any housekeepers clean his room? Anyone carry his bags? What did he order from room service? What did his hotel suite look like?

This is difficult information to get in the aftermath of a tragedy. For one, many people were traumatized and found it hard to discuss what had transpired. One man from Massachusetts said he was cutting his trip short, and I heard many others echo his feeling of being shaken up.

Dealing with the corporate side of things also proved to be a tall task. Officials at MGM International, which owns the Mandalay Bay, did not want their employees giving out information, so we had to speak discreetly with a few workers who were willing to fill in details. One told us exactly what room the gunman was in. Another told us that he had actually reserved two rooms. Yet another described the hotel’s protocol for checking guests’ luggage.

We booked a suite a few floors below Mr. Paddock’s with the same floor plan and same view so we could get a vantage point of what he saw the night of the shooting. We also roamed the casino trying to find regulars who might have met Mr. Paddock, who was a big video poker player. We only found one, a man who remembered Mr. Paddock congratulating him on hitting a royal flush just a few days before the shooting.

Hotel officials did not take kindly to this probing.

On our second day there, a security guard knocked on the door of our suite and told us that we were not allowed to interview employees on the property. A couple of days later, after I got a cup of water from a bar named Eye Candy on the casino floor, a security guard stopped me out of the blue and asked for my identification. He said there were complaints that I was harassing someone in the bar — but I had not talked to anyone but the bartender.

The next day, when Las Vegas police officers, including one who had been shot during Mr. Paddock’s rampage, met one of my colleagues at the hotel to tell her their story, a Mandalay Bay official told them they were not allowed to conduct the interview there. As a reporter, it’s annoying to have officials stymieing your efforts to inform the public — but it’s a telling sign, too, of the psychological impact a tragedy like this can have on everyone involved, however tangentially.

Decorative lighting still hangs from a stage on the festival ground, and it’s illuminated at night. It’s as if the event is still going on — and indeed, the tragedy will stick in our collective consciousness for a while.