Trump Calls Response to Las Vegas Shooting "Incredible Tribute to Professionalism"

WHITE HOUSE - U.S. President Donald Trump, after visiting victims of a mass shooting in Las Vegas, said Wednesday there is still no known motive for the attack but investigators are “looking very hard” for answers.

Trump, speaking alongside First Lady Melania Trump, praised emergency personnel and medical staff help who responded to the massacre that killed at least 58 people and wounded more than 500.

“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 aid of others at peril to their own lives at the concert.

The shooting happened on Sunday night when a gunman in a hotel tower fired into a large crowd attending country music festival.

“He’s a sick, demented man,” Trump subsequently said of the gunman during a meeting with first responders at the command center of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

The shooting on the Las Vegas Strip, a popular American tourism destination, 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.”

Police say 64-year-old Stephen Paddock fired on the crowd of 22,000 people from his 32nd-floor room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. Authorities say Paddock fatally shot himself as police moved in.

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 she reportedly has told authorities she had no involvement with the planning for the attack.

Danley took a flight back to the United States late Tuesday.

LVMPD Sheriff Joe Lombardo said Danley is a person of interest in the criminal investigation of the attack, which authorities say was clearly premeditated.

U.S. security officials also say investigators are examining a $100,000 wire transfer that Paddock made to an account in the Philippines in the days before the shooting.

"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.

The sheriff 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.

Investigators found 23 guns inside Paddock’s hotel room and 12 so-called "bump stock" devices that can enable a rifle to fire continuously. The gunman also set up multiple cameras looking out into the hallway outside the room, apparently to monitor the police response. 

Another 26 guns were found at two of Paddock's homes in the state of Nevada.