HIND SIGHT, MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACKING, reflecting on what I know from the media, is more than an interesting pass time.
As an enterprise risk management practitioner — albeit a retired one — I always provide an “after action” report, if only for myself.
COULD THE MASSACRE have been predicted?
Probably not. By all accounts, the killer's kin and friends contend the killer wasn’t angry at any particular group — race, religion, ethnicity, etc. His inamorata left for her parents in, I believe, the Philippines a few weeks before the rampage. A peaceful parting?
One: Local man checks into a local lodging.
- While it happens that a person with a relatively local address might check into a local lodging, it’s not that common.
Two: The guest, a single person, checks into the facility with TEN suitcases.
- I’ve known actresses who checked into a hotel with LESS luggage.
Three: The guest — with his 10 pieces of luggage — extends his stay beyond a day or two.
- It is said that the killer was a gambler, and no matter how lucky, the house odds are in the house’s favor; win $5, lose $10. If you are big in Vegas, add several zeros to the $5 and $10.
Four: Apparently no one found it odd that the killer’s closet wasn’t stuffed with 10 suitcase’s full of personal haberdashery.
- Most lodges offer to change their guest’s linens at least weekly. Perhaps the killer’s arrangement with the inn was one of “Do Not Disturb..” Still, the killer apparently ordered room service.
Bottom line: There WERE red flags had any one been alert to them . . . and had anyone SHARED the information with others. Shades of 9-11-2001 when one federal agency had information it failed to share with another federal agency that had other information it would not disclose. More than 3,000 people perished, largely due to a turf war between federal agencies.
- In Nevada, and much of the Intermountain West, turf wars between the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management are infamous.
Given the availability of mail order ammunition, and the relatively low price of .223 caliber rounds, it would be nigh on impossible to know if the killer was stockpiling thousands of rounds of ammunition. A thousand rounds of .223 costs about $230.
Lessons learned
Of course this is all just Monday morning quarterbacking, but it might prove useful to prevent, or at least mitigate, a similar tragedy in the future. I’ve heard more than one person suggest that there are others “out there” who want to beat this killer’s record of dead and wounded.
The one thing I always preached was BE ALERT TO ANYTHING OUT OF THE ORDINARY. To my mind, 10 pieces of luggage for a single guest would seem “out of the ordinary.”
But then I’ve never been to Las Vegas. (Nevada, yes; Las Vegas, no.)
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
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