Hotel owners to pay Las Vegas shooting victims up to £650 million after killer stockpiled weapons in hotel room that he used to kill 58
MGM has agreed to pay the victims of the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas up to £650m in compensation, it was revealed tonight.
The company owns the Mandalay Bay Hotel where Stephen Paddock fired more than 1,100 rounds from the 32nd-floor into a crowd of 22,000 people attending an outdoor music festival.
The 64-year-old killed 58 people and wounded 800 others before turning one of his quick-firing assault rifles on himself.
Many were angered that the shooter was able to stockpile weapons and ammunition in his suite without hotel security knowing.
Last night, lawyers for thousands of the victims confirmed they had reached a settlement with MGM Resorts International, which owns both the Mandalay Bay resort and the venue across the street where the country music festival was staged.
“While nothing will be able to bring back the lives lost or undo the horrors so many suffered on that day, this settlement will provide fair compensation for thousands of victims and their families,” Robert Eglet, a lead counsel representing some 2,500 plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement.
The total settlement might rise to $800m (£650m) depending on how many claimants choose to participate, according to the law firm Eglet Adams.
Jim Murren, Chairman of MGM Resorts, said their aim was always to “resolve these matters so our community and the victims and their families can move forward in the healing process”.
“We have always believed that prolonged litigation around these matters is in no-one’s best interest,” he said.
Claimants include not just the families of the dead and the injured, but many more who say they suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental and emotional injuries as a result of the massacre.
As the legal claims piled up, MGM last year drew outrage when it filed lawsuits against more than 1,900 victims, arguing it had no liability to survivors or families of slain victims under a federal law enacted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Dr Heather Melton, an orthopaedic surgeon whose husband, Sonny, died shielding her from the gunfire, said she had mixed feelings about the settlement.
“There’s some good that comes from it: It will help give families closure and alleviates their ongoing medical costs,” she said.
“But there’s no amount of money I would take to not get my husband back.”
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The settlement is the third-largest victims compensation fund in US history, according to a claims administrator who has doled out money in major attacks and disasters.
Deranged Paddock smuggled a cache of 23 weapons into the hotel, including AK-47s.
His massive arsenal was believed to include an AR-15, four DDM4 rifles, three FN-15 rifles and Sig Sauer rifles.
Outrage at the killing led to a ban on bump stocks – devices that make rifles fire like machine guns.
Hundreds took cover as Paddock rained bullets from the high-rise hotel into the outdoor Route 91 Harvest Festival during the deadliest mass shooting in the nation’s modern history.
Officers formed attack teams and worked their way along hotel hallways before blasting with explosives through bullet-riddled doors of a 32nd-floor room to find the shooter dead amid a cache of assault-style rifles.
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Authorities have said Paddock killed himself before police arrived. Investigators believe he acted alone with no broader conspiracy and no link to terrorism.
The officials have also determined that he fired more than 1,000 shots in 11 minutes out the windows and down the interior hallway.
They did not determine what motivated him to meticulously plan and execute the massacre.
