‘It just kept getting worse’: Lombardo recalls Oct. 1 shooting 3 years later

By Ricardo Torres-Cortez

Thursday, Oct. 1, 2020 | 2 a.m.

Gunfire had stopped at the Route 91 Harvest music festival by the time Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo arrived at the fairgrounds three years ago. 

As he pulled up to the scene, leaving a dinner on the Strip after receiving the call, the chaos was evident with the sight of concertgoers still fleeing the area. In his three decades on the Las Vegas police force prior to Oct. 1, 2017, even during the worst of incidents, Lombardo knew that eventually there would be calm.

But that night, Lombardo told the Sun earlier this week, “it just kept getting worse and worse and worse as time went on.” 

Then, there was the aftermath. “In size, in length and time, there’s no comparison,” he added.

As that late Sunday turned into Monday morning, Lombardo announced to the world that 58 victims had perished. Within the last year, shooting victims Samantha Arjune, 26, of Las Vegas, and Kimberly Gervais, a 57-year-old Californian, have also lost their lives because of injuries suffered that night. 

Lombardo oversaw the monthslong investigation, which concluded there was no definitive motive as to why the gunman would indiscriminately open fire perched 32 floors above in a hotel room across the road. The department last year released a comprehensive report that recommended dozens of fixes to better respond to future critical incidents, including organization, scene documentation, enhanced communication technology, and more concrete information released to the public in the immediate aftermath.

As of today, the massacre remains the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. 

Lombardo still thinks about that night, especially when he passes by the golden hotel tower at Mandalay Bay. 

“The sight of the landscape is a subtle reminder on a regular basis,” Lombardo said. 

Lombardo said he thinks about the victims and their families, and the closure they need, which often comes through a resolution, a motive. 

The gunman, who Lombardo maintains had a diminishing mental capacity, is likely the only person who knew a why. He killed himself before officers entered the double suite he was firing from. 

“I think anytime a loved one has died, they would appreciate some closure. In this case there is no closure,” he said.

As of this week, Metro hasn’t included the deaths of Arjune (in May) and Gervais (in November 2019) to its mass shooting causality count. Adding them will be determined by the Clark County Coroner’s Office and the Clark County District Attorney’s Office, Lombardo said. 

The coroner has already ruled Arjune’s death as a homicide after her death, as did the coroner in San Bernardino County after Gervais died. Lombardo said the department acknowledges those deaths being as a result of the shooting. 

“It’s unfortunate those two individuals eventually lost their lives with this event, but I don’t want people to get caught up in the semantics of it,” Lombardo said. “It’s important for us to have understanding and empathy, and we acknowledge it, and we verbally acknowledge it. But as far as record keeping, it’s out of our hands, and it’s a matter of the coroner and the DA, in consensus with us, to finalize that.”

The issue is when they will be annotated in local records, which the sheriff expects to happen eventually. 

The two deaths will be a part of the data Metro sends to the FBI for its annual Uniform Crime Report, Lombardo said.

As he prepared his remarks for the annual 1 October Sunrise Remembrance at 7 a.m. today at the Clark County Government Center Amphitheater, his department is also in the throes of a global pandemic that killed Metro Lt. Erik Lloyd and infected nearly 300 other employees in the department. 

The virus is an “unknown assailant,” Lombardo said.  “You don’t know who’s going to contract it at any point in time; and who’s the most vulnerable community that you have to deal with it, and when is it ever going to end … how long can your folks put up with that type of environment?”  

His feelings on the shooting and COVID-19 intersected during Lloyd’s funeral in August when he saw the wife and children of Officer Charleston Hartfield, who was one of the attendees of the Route 91 concert, and died as he tried to help fleeing concertgoers.

Lombardo, the woman, and the teenagers had a long conversation, which he often does to assure them “we’re still here … supporting them, and we haven’t forgotten about them,” Lombardo said.