Man labeled ‘person of interest’ in search warrants says he didn’t detect anything wrong with Vegas shooter

Reporting from Las Vegas —  An Arizona man who sold hundreds of rounds of ammunition to Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock said Wednesday he had no idea Paddock might be planning a mass shooting.

Douglas Haig told “CBS This Morning” that he sold 720 rounds of ammunition to Paddock weeks before the gunman shot into a music festival crowd on the Las Vegas Strip. “I couldn’t detect anything wrong with this guy,” Haig said. “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’s name surfaced Tuesday when a Nevada district court judge unsealed more than 300 pages of search warrants and the name was mistakenly not redacted from one of the documents.

The error was caught after the Las Vegas Review-Journal was given an unredacted copy and published Haig’s name in a story.

Haig told the news program he sold Paddock “tracer ammunition” that leaves a streak of light when fired.

“He said he was going to go put on a light show. And I can’t remember whether he said for or with his friends, but that’s what he did say,” Haig said.

Paddock, 64, was staying at the Mandalay Bay on Oct. 1, 2017, and, from his room on the 32nd floor, opened fire on a crowd of more than 20,000 at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival. He killed 58 and wounded hundreds. He then turned a gun on himself.

Investigators have been trying to determine a motive for Paddock’s shooting rampage, but few clues have emerged that would answer that question — despite hundreds of pages of search warrants being released in recent weeks and a news conference held by Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo this month.

Lombardo sought to dispel conspiracy theories linked to multiple gunmen or ties to Islamic State and took the unusual step of releasing his agency’s preliminary investigative report.

Haig said he was at a loss to explain why Paddock did it.

It was unclear from the CBS interview whether Haig was still a person of interest. He has said he was interviewed by law enforcement shortly after the shooting. The FBI didn’t return requests for comment and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department — which opposed unsealing the search warrants — referred questions to the FBI.

“I felt that they were hoping that they could find a connection between myself and Paddock, that would go back showing that I supplied him with most of his ammunition, possibly even some firearms,” Haig told CBS. “They’re not gonna find it. I talked to the guy three times.”

The only other person of interest named in search warrants was Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley. But she has cooperated with authorities and said after the shooting she had no idea Paddock was going to commit the crime.

Haig denied the search warrant’s allegation that he “may have conspired with Stephen Paddock to commit murder with a deadly weapon.”

Haig told CBS he doesn’t blame himself for what Paddock did, and he said he shut down his ammunition business after the tragedy.

“I’m still racking my brain for what did I miss,” he said. “Why didn’t I pick this up?”

david.montero@latimes.com

Twitter: @davemontero