Man charged over armor-piercing bullet
sale to Las Vegas gunman
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[February 03, 2018]
By Steve Gorman
(Reuters) - An ammunition dealer who has
acknowledged selling hundreds of rounds of tracer bullets to a gunman
responsible for killing 58 people in Las Vegas was charged on Friday
with conspiracy to make and sell armor-piercing ammunition without a
license.
Douglas Haig, 55, of the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, Arizona, became the
first person arrested and charged in connection with the Oct. 1
massacre, which ended when the perpetrator, Stephen Paddock, killed
himself.
But Haig told a news conference at the office of his attorney on Friday
that none of the surplus military ammunition he sold Paddock in
September was ever fired during the killing spree, which ranks as the
deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Nearly 500 people were
injured.
Haig said he had no inkling of any criminal intent by Paddock. The
ammunition dealer said Paddock told him, when asked, that he planned to
use the tracer bullets to "put on a light show either with, or for, his
friends" in the desert.
Paddock strafed a crowd of outdoor concert-goers with rapid-fire
gunshots from his high-rise suite at the Mandalay Bay hotel before
police stormed his room to find the 64-year-old retiree dead. No motive
for the massacre has ever been established.
Haig said he was certain the gunman never used any of the 720 rounds of
magnesium-packed tracer bullets Paddock had purchased from him.
"You would have seen red streaks coming from the window. And there
weren't red steaks coming from the window," he said.
His lawyer, Marc Victor, suggested the casualty toll would have been
lower had the tracer rounds been used, because victims would have seen
the trajectory of gunfire in the dark and been able to take cover more
easily.
"It's probably a bad thing that the ammunition Doug sold was not used,"
Victor said.
Haig also said there was nothing suspicious in Paddock's demeanor when
he visited Haig's home to make the purchase.
"He was very well dressed, very well groomed, very polite, very
respectful - told me what he wanted, I gathered it up, put it in a box,
told him what he owed me. He paid me, put it in his car and drove away,"
Haig recounted.
Victor called it "a routine transaction to purchase a routine type of
ammunition that is available in many different retail outlets throughout
the sate of Arizona." Victor said the two men had no further contact.
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The "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign is surrounded by flowers and items,
left after the October 1 mass shooting, in Las Vegas, Nevada U.S.
October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Las Vegas Sun/Steve Marcus
Victor said Haig got into the ammunition re-sale business in 1991 as
a hobby, and has always been a "law-abiding citizen."
Haig was charged with a single count of conspiracy to manufacture
and sell armor-piercing ammunition, which carries a maximum penalty
of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to the
statement.
The criminal complaint, filed in a U.S. District court in Phoenix,
said Haig previously had run an internet business selling
armor-piercing bullets - including high-explosive and incendiary
rounds - throughout the United States.
It said some merchandise sold through that business consisted of
cartridges that had been "reloaded," or assembled from component
parts, though Haig lacked a license to make such ammunition for
sale.
According to the complaint, Haig insisted to investigators that
while he reloads ammunition cartridges for himself, he never offered
them to paying customers and that none reloaded by him would turn up
at the crime scene in Las Vegas.
However, prosecutors said Haig's fingerprints were found on some of
the unfired rounds in Paddock's hotel suite and that armor-piercing
cartridges recovered there bore tool marks matching the reloading
equipment in Haig's workshop.
Haig made an initial court appearance before a federal magistrate in
Phoenix and was freed on his own recognizance under conditional
release pending a Feb. 15 status conference set for the case,
prosecutors said.
(Writing and reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional
reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver; Editing by Leslie Adler and
Clarence Fernandez)
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