This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

An Arizona man named in court documents as a “person of interest” during the investigation of the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history said he had met the gunman one time and sold ammunition to him.

Las Vegas shooting followed a depressingly familiar routine Read more

Douglas Haig told the Associated Press on Tuesday that he had been contacted earlier by investigators in the case.

Speaking at his suburban home in Mesa, Nevada, Haig said he planned to hold a news conference later this week to answer questions about his name surfacing in the investigation.

“I am the guy who sold ammunition to Stephen Paddock,” Haig said without disclosing any details. Police say Paddock was the gunman and killed himself as officers converged on him.

A law enforcement official told the AP in October that Paddock bought 1,000 rounds of tracer ammunition from a private seller he met at a Phoenix gun show. The official spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to disclose case information. It was not immediately clear if that person was Haig.

Records show Haig owns Specialized Military Ammunition LLC. The company’s website says it sold tracer and incendiary ammunition but is now “closed indefinitely”.

Haig said on CBS This Morning on Wednesday, that he sold more than 700 rounds of ammunition to Paddock, but had no connection to the man and had no idea what he was planning.

“I couldn’t detect anything wrong with this guy,” he said of Paddock. “He told me exactly what he wanted. I handed him a box with the ammunition in it, and he paid me and he left.”

Haig said Paddock told him he was going to put on a “light show” with the tracer ammunition he bought. The bullets leave a visible trail when fired.

Haig said he wonders “What did I miss?” and “Why didn’t I pick this up?” in his interaction with Paddock.

Haig’s name emerged by mistake on Tuesday when court documents were released nearly four months after the shooting. The documents did not disclose why authorities considered Haig a person of interest.

Police officials did not respond to telephone, text and email messages about Haig from AP. FBI and US attorney’s office spokeswomen in Las Vegas declined to comment.

The documents show that early in the investigation, police believed Paddock must have had help. “Given the magnitude of the incident, it is reasonable to believe multiple suspects and months of planning were involved in this premeditated massacre,” said one search warrant request submitted to a judge nine days after the shooting stopped.

However, Sheriff Joe Lombardo of Clark County released a preliminary report on 19 January saying police and the FBI believe Paddock acted alone before he killed himself as police closed in.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Mandalay Bay hotel and casino from which the shooter conducted his deadly rampage. Photograph: John Locher/AP

It did not answer the key question: what made Paddock stockpile a cache of assault-style weapons and fire for about 10 minutes out the windows of Mandalay Bay hotel-casino into a crowd of 22,000 people.

Haig’s name was blacked out in the more than 270 pages of search warrant records released by a Nevada judge to the AP, but remained on one page of documents provided to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The newspaper published the name online. Judge Elissa Cadish of Clark County district court, later ordered the full document not be published without redactions, but she acknowledged she could not order the newspaper to retract the name.

Authorities previously said an unnamed person could face unspecified federal charges in connection with the shooting that also injured more than 800 people.

The name of Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, was not redacted from documents released on Tuesday in response to a public records lawsuit filed by media companies including AP and the Review-Journal.

Danley was in the Philippines at the time of the attack and is cooperating with investigators.

She was initially considered a person of interest but authorities later said she is unlikely to face criminal charges.