APNewsBreak: Man who sold ammo to Las Vegas shooter charged

An Arizona man who sold ammunition to the gunman in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history was charged Friday with manufacturing armor-piercing bullets, according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Unfired armor-piercing bullets found inside the Las Vegas hotel room where the attack was launched on Oct. 1 contained the fingerprints of ammunition dealer Douglas Haig of Arizona, according to the complaint filed in federal court in Phoenix. It says Haig didn’t have a license to manufacture armor-piercing ammunition.

The records don’t say if the ammunition was used in the attack. Haig was charged shortly before holding a news conference Friday where he said he didn’t notice anything suspicious when he sold 720 rounds of ammunition to Stephen Paddock in the weeks before the attack that killed 58 people.

Haig, a 55-year-old aerospace engineer who sold ammunition as a hobby for about 25 years, said he met Paddock at a Phoenix gun show in the weeks before the shooting and he was well-dressed and polite.

He didn’t have the quantity of tracer ammunition on hand that Paddock was seeking, so Paddock contacted him a few days later and lined up a sale at Haig’s home in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa. Tracer bullets contain a pyrotechnic charge that illuminates the path of fired bullets so shooters can see whether their aim is correct.

Haig said he was shocked and sickened when a federal agent informed him of the massacre 11 hours after it unfolded.

“I had no contribution to what Paddock did,” Haig said, adding that there was nothing unusual about the type or quantity of ammunition Paddock bought. “I had no way to see into his mind.”

Haig’s lawyer said they held the news conference in a bid to protect his reputation after he was revealed earlier this week to be a “person of interest” in the investigation. Haig’s identity emerged by mistake after his name was not redacted in court documents.

Haig arose in the investigation when a box with his name and address was found in the Mandalay Bay hotel suite where Paddock launched the attack on a music festival below.

He gave the box to Paddock to carry the 720 rounds of tracer ammunition from the sale.

Haig said Paddock told him that “he was going to go out to the desert to put on a light show, either with or for his friends. I can’t remember whether he used the word ‘with’ or ‘for.’ But he said that he was going out at night to shoot it with friends.”

He said he has received unwanted media attention and death threats since his name was released. Still, Haig, who has closed his ammunition business, said he doesn’t expect to take any legal action as a result of his name being publicly revealed.

The Las Vegas Police Department and U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives declined to comment when contacted earlier Friday.

The FBI and U.S. attorney’s office in Nevada didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

———

Follow Jacques Billeaud at www.twitter.com/jacquesbilleaud . His work can be found at https://www.apnews.com/search/jacques%20billeaud .

Share and Enjoy

Dow sees worst day in two years as bond yields jump

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Worries about the impact of a tightening job market on the prospects for inflation and a surge in bond yields sent investors fleeing equities on Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrials Average swooning almost 666 points, for its biggest daily percentage loss in 20 months.

It was the biggest daily point fall in the Dow since December 2008 during the financial crisis.

With Friday’s rout, Wall Street’s three major indexes logged their biggest weekly losses in two years, after closing at record highs the previous week. The SP 500 and Dow saw their worst weeks since early January 2016 while Nasdaq had its worst week since early Feb 2016.

“People are starting to really get increasingly uncomfortable with the rapid rise in interest rates that we have seen and the uncertainty of how that is actually going to start to play out relative to competition for stocks,” said Chuck Carlson, chief executive officer at Horizon Investment Services in Hammond, Indiana.

Overnight stock price losses accelerated after the U.S. Labor Department reported employment grew more than expected in January with the biggest wage gain in more than 8-1/2 years. The picture of workers commanding higher salaries fueled expectations that inflation is on the rise, which could prompt the Federal Reserve to take a more aggressive approach to rate hikes this year.

That caused the 10-year Treasury yield to surge to 2.8450 percent the highest since Jan. 2014, which could make returns on Treasuries look more attractive relative to stocks.

But market players are not convinced that the bull market in stocks that that saw the SP 500 rise 5.6 percent in January is over. In fact many say a pull back was overdue.

“You have a jobs report today that was pretty robust all kind of feeding into the higher interest rates, greater inflation story, and I think the markets are trying to grapple with that right now,” said Carlson.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 665.75 points, or 2.54 percent, to 25,520.96, the SP 500 .SPX lost 59.85 points, or 2.12 percent, to 2,762.13 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 144.92 points, or 1.96 percent, to 7,240.95.

SP 500 e-mini stock futures EScv1 extended losses after 4 p.m. ET close in the cash market. SP 500 futures closed down 2.3 percent, the biggest daily percentage drop since September 2016.

All 11 major sectors of the SP 500 closed down. Technology .SPLRCT weighed the heaviest, with Microsoft (MSFT.O) pulling the sector down 3.0 percent.

The CBOE Volatility Index .VIX, the most widely followed barometer of expected near-term volatility for the SP 500 Index rose more than four points to 17.86, its highest since November 2016. VIX options trading volume hit a record high.

Analysts now see fourth-quarter earnings growth of 13.6 percent for the SP 500, up from 12 percent on January 1. Half of the index’s companies have reported, 78 percent of which beat Street expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) and Chevron Corp (CVX.N) shares were down 5.1 percent and 5.6 percent, respectively, after the oil companies posted lower-than-expected fourth-quarter profit.

Alphabet (GOOGL.O) fell 5.3 percent after the Google parent’s fourth-quarter profit came in below consensus on increased spending.

Apple (AAPL.O) shares were off by 4.3 percent as investors worried about the iPhone maker’s weak outlook amid reports of scaled back iPhone X production.

Amazon.com (AMZN.O) was a bright spot, up 2.9 percent as Wall Street analysts quickly upped their price targets following the online retailer’s impressive earnings report.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 7.70-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 3.90-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The SP 500 posted 18 new 52-week highs and 18 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 48 new highs and 103 new lows.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 5.39 billion shares, compared to the 7.33 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.

Related Coverage

• Analyst View: U.S. stocks extend rout as bond yields churn higher

Reporting by Stephen Culp; editing by Clive McKeef

Share and Enjoy