The note was first discovered by Officer Dave Newton from the Las Vegas Police Department’s K-9 unit, lying face-up on Paddock’s nightstand.
‘I could see on it he had written the distance, the elevation he was on, the drop of what his bullet was gonna be for the crowd,’ Newton said. ‘So he had that written down and figured out so he would know where to shoot to hit his targets from there.’
The Route 91 Harvest Music Festival played to over 20,000 people at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, where Paddock had reserved a suite on the 32nd floor.
The room looked down on the crowd across the street and was an estimated 400 feet away, according to Las Vegas officials.
Newton said it was very ‘eerie’ to enter the room and find the lifeless body of a man who had just minutes before unleashed a rain of carnage upon hundreds of innocent people.
Authorities also revealed on Saturday that Paddock may have driven to the Nevada desert to prepare for Sunday’s attack.
Investigators said that they have found surveillance footage showing Paddock driving towards a secluded area on the outskirts of Mesquite, Nevada where locals are known to practice shooting.
Paddock was a resident of Mesquite, about a 90 minute drive to Las Vegas, and split much of his time between there and Las Vegas hotel rooms.
Records show that Paddock began stocking an arsenal of weapons in 2016, buying 33 of his 47 guns since last October, including AR-15-style rifles, according to the Wall Street Journal.
More than a dozen high-powered assault weapons were found in Paddock’s room following Sunday’s massacre, including guns modified with ‘bump stocks’, an alteration that allows guns to fire bullets at a faster rate.
Meanwhile, authorities began cleaning up the area where the shooting occurred, clearing away the personal belongings of thousands of concert goers lucky enough to have escaped with their lives.