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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2018
Las Vegas shooting memorial:
‘None of us will ever be the same’
By KEN RITTER
Associated Press
LAS VEGAS — A flock
of doves fluttered skyward at
sunrise in Las Vegas today,
each bird bearing a leg band
with the name of one of the
58 people slain in the deadli-
est mass shooting in nation’s
modern history one year ago.
Marking the anniver-
sary of the night that a gun-
man opened fire from a high-
rise casino suite on a crowd
of 22,000 country music fans,
Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval
gathered with several hundred
people at an outdoor amphithe-
ater remembrance ceremony.
“Today we remember the
unforgettable. Today, we com-
fort the inconsolable,” Sando-
val told survivors , families of
victims, first-responders and
elected officials who gathered
at dawn.
He added: “Today, we are
reminded of the pain that never
really goes away.”
Among those who offered
prayers, songs and speeches
was Mynda Smith, whose sis-
ter Neysa Davis Tonks was
killed.
Mynda Smith said her sis-
ter, who pronounced her name
“Neesha,” was a 46-year-
old single mother rais-
ing three boys in Las Vegas.
Smith called her sister ener-
getic, adventurous, a fan of all
kinds of music and a per-
son who danced when no one
AP Photo/John Locher
People pray at a makeshift memorial on Sunday for victims of the Oct. 1 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas.
was watching.
Smith started a scholarship
fund for victims’ children and
said she reached out to loved
ones of almost all the dead.
“None of us will ever be
the same,” Mynda Smith said.
“We have all changed. We
have all been broken. But we
can find a way to pick up those
pieces and glue it all back
Problems mount for
Pentagon’s immigrant
recruit program
By LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
—
Stricter Trump administration
immigration policies have sty-
mied Pentagon plans to restart
a program that allowed thou-
sands of people with critical
medical or Asian and African
language skills to join the mil-
itary and become American
citizens, according to several
U.S. officials.
The decade-old program
has been on hold since 2016
amid concerns that immi-
grant recruits were not being
screened well enough, and
security threats were slipping
through the system. Defense
officials shored up the vet-
ting process, and planned to
relaunch the program earlier
this month.
But there was an unex-
pected barrier when Home-
land Security officials said
they would not be able to pro-
tect new immigrant recruits
from being deported when
their temporary visas expired
after they signed a contract
to join the military, the U.S.
officials said. They were
not authorized to publicly
describe internal discussions
and spoke on condition of
anonymity.
The program is called Mil-
itary Accessions Vital to the
National Interest program, or
MAVNI. The plan to restart it
was backed by Defense Secre-
tary Jim Mattis, who believes
that noncitizens can bring
key skills, language abilities,
and cultural knowledge to the
military.
Mattis, a combat veteran of
multiple war tours, has fought
with and commanded foreign
nationals, and he believes their
service adds to the lethality
of America’s fighting force,
according to the officials.
The Pentagon chief told
reporters late last month that
the program is designed to
enlist immigrants with needed
skills. “We need and want
every qualified patriot will-
ing to serve and able to serve,”
Mattis said.
together. Yes, the cracks will
be seen. But it can be whole
again and we will be stronger.”
Christie Kraemer, a Las
Vegas real estate agent who
wasn’t at the concert but knew
people who were, said “I never
want Oct. 1 to happen again.
But I love Oct. 2 because of the
way everyone came together.”
Shooting survivors Chris
and Larisa Rapanick of Ches-
apeake, Virginia, made the
trip to Las Vegas for weekend
events including a 5K run, a
country music club show and
a reunion of survivors on Sat-
urday. At the sunrise service,
they stood with their two adult
daughters.
“We weren’t going to let
this ruin a place we like to
come to,” Chris Rapanick said.
“I’m glad to be standing here.”
Clark County Sheriff Joe
Lombardo recalled the chaos
and confusion of the shooting,
and the prayers to “heal bro-
ken hearts,” blood banks filled
with donors and “acts of kind-
ness that comforted the suffer-
ing” that followed.
“When the sun rose the
next morning, grief turned to
anger, anger turned to resolve
and resolve turned to action,”
Lombardo said.
Many who were cheering
Jason Aldean’s headline set on
at the Route 91 Harvest Festi-
val late Oct. 1, 2017 , said later
they thought the rapid crack-
crack-crack they heard was
fireworks — until people fell
dead, wounded, bleeding.
The Rapanicks heard bul-
lets hitting a canvas awning
near them as they fled and saw
a shot hit a plastic cup that
flipped in the air.
From across neon-lit Las
Vegas Boulevard, a gam-
bler-turned-gunman with what
police later called a meticulous
plan but an unknown reason
fired assault-style rifles for 11
minutes from 32nd-floor win-
dows of the Mandalay Bay
hotel into the concert crowd
below. Police said he then put
a pistol in his mouth and killed
himself.
Medical examiners later
determined that all 58 deaths
were from gunshots. Another
413 people were wounded, and
police said at least 456 were
injured fleeing the carnage.
Lombardo declared the
police investigation over
in August, issuing a report
that said hundreds of inter-
views and thousands of hours
of investigative work could
not provide answers to what
made Stephen Craig Paddock
unleash his hail of gunfire.
President Trump says he supports
‘comprehensive’ FBI Kavanaugh probe
By DARLENE
SUPERVILLE and
MICHAEL BALSAMO
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Presi-
dent Donald Trump said today
he wants the FBI to do a “com-
prehensive” investigation into
allegations of sexual miscon-
duct by Brett Kavanaugh. But
he also said he stands by his
Supreme Court nominee “all
the way.”
Trump said during a Rose
Garden press conference that
he wants the probe to wrap
up quickly because the accu-
sations have been “so unfair”
to Kavanaugh and his family.
But he said it’s fine with him if
the FBI wants to pursue accu-
sations made by three women
who have publicly come for-
ward even as he has left the
scope of the investigation to
Senate Republicans.
“My White House will do
whatever the senators want,”
Trump said. “The one thing I
want is speed.”
The president added, “We
don’t want to go on a witch
hunt, do we?”
AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
President Donald Trump speaks about Supreme Court
nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh in the Rose Garden of
the White House.
FBI agents interviewed one
of the three women who have
accused Kavanaugh of sex-
ual misconduct as Republi-
cans and Democrats quarreled
over whether the bureau would
have enough time and freedom
to conduct a thorough inves-
tigation before a high-stakes
vote on his nomination to the
nation’s highest court.
The White House insisted
it was not “micromanaging”
the new one-week review of
Kavanaugh’s background, but
some Democratic lawmak-
ers claimed the White House
was keeping investigators from
interviewing certain witnesses.
President Donald Trump
tweeted that no matter how
much time and discretion the
FBI was given, “it will never
be enough” for Democrats try-
ing to keep Kavanaugh off the
bench.
And even as the FBI
explored the past allegations
that have surfaced against
Kavanaugh, another Yale Uni-
versity classmate came forward
to accuse the federal appel-
late judge of being untruth-
ful in his testimony to the Sen-
ate Judiciary Committee about
the extent of his drinking in
college.
As the fresh review
unfolded, the prosecutor who
was brought in by Republi-
cans to handle questioning at
last week’s hearing outlined in
a new memo why she did not
believe criminal charges would
be brought against Kavana-
ugh if it were a criminal case
rather than a Supreme Court
confirmation process. Rachel
Mitchell wrote that she did not
believe a “reasonable prosecu-
tor would bring this case based
on the evidence before the
Committee.”
Mitchell argued that that
there were inconsistencies in
accuser Christine Blasey Ford’s
narrative and said no one has
corroborated Ford’s account.
Ford, a California college pro-
fessor, was not questioned as
part of a criminal proceeding
but in the confirmation process.