Many Las Vegas Strip lights dimmed exactly a week since the shooting

LAS VEGAS – Many of the Las Vegas Strip’s bright lights dimmed at 10:05 p.m. Sunday – exactly a week since a gunman opened fire, killing 58 people and wounding almost 500 at a country music festival.

Most casinos along Las Vegas Boulevard darkened their marquees briefly in tribute to the victims. Officials say more than 50 other properties around town also took part in the memorial.

CBS Las Vegas affiliate KLAS-TV reports the dimming lasted about 11 minutes.

Earlier, hundreds showed up for a vigil marking a week since the massacre.

Also, KLAS says country music star Jason Aldean – the headliner of the Route 91 Harvest Festival that gunman Stephan Paddock fired on — visited University Medical Center on Sunday. Many victims were brought to that facility. Aldean was performing when Paddock attacked.

The Strip was also darkened after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

It was last dimmed to mark the death in February 2015 of legendary former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian. Others whose deaths were marked the same way include Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., George Burns and Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

Federal investigators returned to search Paddock’s home Sunday, and the officers who raided his hotel room door the night of the shooting gave a harrowing account of a barricaded door they had to bust through and the booby-traps they feared they’d find.

The search of Paddock’s three-bedroom house on a cul-de-sac in a retirement community in Mesquite, Nevada, was for “re-documenting and rechecking,” said local police Chief Troy Tanner, who accompanied FBI agents as they served the search warrant.

“I don’t think they are after anything specific,” Tanner told The Associated Press. “They’re going through everything and photographing everything again.”

The home was first searched Monday by Las Vegas police, who said they found 19 guns and several pounds of potentially explosive materials at the house that Paddock bought in early 2015.

Meanwhile, the makeshift SWAT team of police officers who made it to Paddock’s door at the Mandalay Bay hotel casino 12 minutes after the first shots were fired described how they got there and the “gun store” they found inside in an appearance on the CBS News broadcast “60 Minutes” Sunday night.

One of them said he hurried from police headquarters to the Mandalay Bay in cowboy boots and ditched them before ascending to the 32nd floor in search of the gunman.

“I just threw them in the casino,” Detective Matthew Donaldson said. “That was slowing’ me down. I was faster barefoot, and I was gonna be more effective barefoot.”

The officers said they heard reports of gunmen on both the 29th and 32nd floor, so “we’re thinking multiple shooters at this point,” Sgt. Joshua Bitsko said.

They zeroed in on the 32nd floor after Paddock unleashed about 200 rounds at a security guard outside his door.

When they got to the stairwell door on that floor near Paddock’s room, they found he had taken special measures to slow them down.

“He had screwed shut the door – with a piece of metal and some screws,” Bitsko said. “Cause he knew we’d be coming out that door to gain entry into his door. So he tried to barricade it as best he could.”

But another officer had a pry bar and was able to easily pop it open, Bitsko said.

Authorities would later reveal that Paddock had surveillance cameras rigged inside and outside his room. But the officers didn’t know that at the time.

“There’s a room service cart with wires going on it underneath the door,” Officer Dave Newton said. “There was something black on top of the cart. So initially I’m, you know, I’m thinking, ‘This is a booby-trap. It’s, it’s going to explode.”‘

Bitsko and Newton are K9 officers who had been training dogs when they got the call about Mandalay Bay. They said they were at a disadvantage approaching because “he knew we were coming and we were going to have to come through,” Newton said. “We didn’t know where he was going to be in that room.”

Bitsko said it was “like a deadly game of hide and seek,” and thought ” ‘Man, I wish I had my dog with me,’ because, you know, it’s nice to have him lead a team.”

It turned out Paddock had already shot and killed himself when they finally entered.

Inside, Newton said he found “so many guns. So many magazines. Stacks and stacks of magazines everywhere. Just in suitcases all neatly stacked against pillars, around the room, all stacked up, rifles placed all throughout. All kinds of monitors and electrical equipment he had in there. It just looked like almost a gun store.”

Also Sunday, authorities began returning the baby strollers, shoes, phones, backpacks and purses that have been strewn for days across the huge crime scene that a week ago was home to 22,000 country music fans at the Route 91 Harvest festival.

Federal agents have spent the week collecting evidence amid the thousands of items that were abandoned in panic, some of them stained with blood.

“Whatever was dropped when people started running, those items we’re collecting and we’re going to provide back,” Paul Flood, unit chief in the FBI’s victim services division said at a news conference.

The items have been catalogued with detailed descriptions, and some have been cleaned of things including blood. They are now being returned to people at the Las Vegas Convention Center, starting with a few sections of the concert scene and expanding to others at a time to be announced later.

Las Vegas hotel and gambling magnate Steve Wynn, who owns casinos that Paddock gambled in but not the Mandalay Bay, said Sunday that his hotels have undertaken special security measures in recent years to identify potentially dangerous guests. Those measures include using magnetometers to detect significant amounts of metal and training housekeeping staff to report suspicious actions like a do-not-disturb sign remaining on a door for extended periods.

“If a room goes on ‘do not disturb’ for more than 12 hours, we investigate,” Wynn, whose hotels include Wynn Las Vegas and Encore, told “Fox News Sunday” in an interview. “We don’t allow guns in this building unless they’re being carried by our employees, and there’s a lot of them. But if anybody’s got a gun and we find them continually, we eject them from the hotel.”

Wynn said a scenario like Paddock’s “would have triggered a whole bunch of alarms here. And we would have, on behalf of the guests, of course, investigated for safety, and it would have been a provocative situation.”

Wynn said that under a counterterrorism plan put in place in 2015, “We profile or inspect or examine everybody that enters the building.”

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Chiefs stay undefeated, run away from young Texans

The Kansas City Chiefs (5-0), a.k.a. The Best Team In Football, stayed undefeated against the Houston Texans (2-3), beating the ailing home team, 42-34, on Sunday night in Week 5. Here’s what we learned:

1. If you don’t consider Alex Smith to be in, and even the front-runner in, the MVP race this season, you’re in deep denial and/or living in the past. The pilot of the game’s most efficient offense, Smith’s mobility and decision-making were on full display on Sunday evening. The Chiefs quarterback completed 78 percent of his passes and completed at least two passes to eight different receivers against one of the league’s better secondaries. Smith (324 yards) looked as in control rolling out of the pocket and holding the ball on run-pass options as he did standing in and launching lasers up the seam to Travis Kelce or down the sideline to Tyreek Hill. Through five games, Smith has as many interceptions as he does losses: zero. Give him the respect he deserves.

2. The tone of this one was set from the very first drive, Yes, the Chiefs mounted a characteristic 15-play, eight-minute scoring drive out of the gate, but it was a pair of devastating injuries on Houston’s side of the ball that changed the trajectory of this tilt. First, Whitney Mercilus was ruled out with a chest injury. NFL Network’s James Palmer reported that he suffered a torn pectoral and will be out for the year. Then, the captain went down, for good.

J.J. Watt suffered a tibial plateau fracture on the 14th play of the game and limped off the field with the help of trainers to a standing ovation from an emotional Houston crowd. Watt is done for the year before the Texans’ bye for the second consecutive season, NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport reported. After the departure of two of their best pass rushers, the air went out of the stadium, Houston’s vaunted pass rush lost its mojo and the game was soon lost.

Watt’s loss will be a major emotional blow, to the football team and the city, but as the Texans did last season and as Houston did last month, there’s little doubt they’ll recover, especially in a competitive AFC South.

3. After a sluggish, sloppy first half, Deshaun Watson bounced back in a big way in the second half. The Texans rookie came into the game as the leading rushing quarterback, but his best moments came when he moved in and out of the pocket evading Kansas City’s swarming second-half pass rush. Watson threw five touchdowns, four of them in the second half during Houston’s failed comeback attempt, becoming the first rookie with four-plus touchdown passes in back-to-back games since Robert Griffin III. Watson’s best passes were deep scoring dimes to Will Fuller (48 yards) and DeAndre Hopkins (34). Expectations should be kept at bay in Houston — the Texans won’t, and can’t, score 57 points every week and Watson’s rapport with Hopkins (four catches on 12 targets) needs work. But Watson, with 14 touchdowns in five games, is the real deal.

4. A relatively quiet night for the breakout rookie Kareem Hunt. As he had in his four previous starts, Hunt got going as the game went on, finishing with 107 yards on 29 carries after a slow start, his fourth 100-yard game in as many career games. (Funny that a rookie breaking the century mark is an afterthought in a prime-time game.) But when the result was up in the air, it was his backfield mate, Charcandrick West, who shined. West scored two first-half touchdowns and also proved a capable blocker. Passed over for Hunt when starting back Spencer Ware went down for the season, West is making himself useful in as many ways as possible, a perfect representation of Kansas City’s modus operandi.

5. Fuller has been back on the field for only two games since returning from a collarbone injury, and he’s already made a massive difference. The speedy second-year receiver scored two touchdowns on two catches against a stiff Chiefs secondary, including one fourth-quarter home-run ball. Fuller’s 49-yard punt return in the fourth quarter was blazing. Once characterized as a drop artist, Fuller has reclaimed his status as a reliable field-stretching deep-ball threat and a force on special teams.

6. The Chiefs lost three significant players to injury as the game wore on. Travis Kelce left in the second half to be evaluated for a concussion after taking a hit to the helmet in the first half; on pace for a career night, he never returned and coach Andy Reid said after the game Kelce is in the concussion protcol. Wide receiver Chris Conley suffered a nasty-looking Achilles injury and was quickly ruled out. After tallying 1.5 sacks, Pro Bowl linebacker Justin Houston left late in the fourth quarter with a calf injury. The only things that can derail K.C.’s fairy-tale season are trips to the training room.

7. Not to be overshadowed by Hunt, last year’s breakout game-changer Tyreek Hill stole the show late. His 82-yard punt return put the win on ice and wasn’t even his best play of the night. Hill’s toe-tapping 38-yard grab along the sideline was his most impressive grab as a true wide receiver.

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