On the evening of October 1, 2017, Sandra Lee "Sandy" Casey, a 35-year-old White female, was attending the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada. A special education teacher from Redondo Beach, California, she was at the concert with her fiancé. What was meant to be a joyous occasion turned into a scene of unimaginable horror when a gunman opened fire on the crowd from a hotel room high above.
The sole suspect in the massacre was Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old man who had
meticulously planned the attack from his suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel. From this vantage point, he unleashed a hail of bullets on the thousands of concertgoers below, firing more than 1,000 rounds in a span of about 11 minutes. In the ensuing chaos and panic, hundreds were injured and dozens lost their lives. Sandra Casey was among the victims who were fatally wounded in the barrage of gunfire. Her fiancé was by her side and tried to shield her, but she was struck in the lower back and died in his arms.
The perpetrator, Stephen Paddock, acted alone in carrying out the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history. As law enforcement officers closed in on his hotel room, he took his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Consequently, there were no arrests made in connection with the shooting itself. Investigators found a large cache of firearms in Paddock's hotel room and at his homes. Despite extensive investigation by local and federal authorities, a clear motive for Paddock's horrific actions has never been determined. The FBI concluded that there was no single or clear motivating factor behind the attack. Paddock had no known ties to any terrorist organizations or hate groups.
