This Lowcountry lawman understands Las Vegas — he responded to the Virginia Tech massacre

His daughter told him to turn on the television, and he did, and even though he was a couple of thousand miles away from Las Vegas, his mind traveled there, just as it traveled to Blacksburg, Va., where years earlier he’d responded to one of these.

Doug Fender, who retired from the F.B.I. in 2013, was visiting family in Mt. Airy, N.C., on Monday as news of a gunman, rapid-fire weapons, a rising death toll and America’s deadliest mass shooting flooded smart phones and TV screens.

His first thought: this was something new.

“I honestly did think to myself, ‘We’ve evolved into the next generation of active shooters,’” Fender, a Harbor Island resident, said Friday morning. “Which means gaining a high position in front of a huge venue with what I thought was fully automatic gunfire, at the time, rather than a bump stock. And I thought, ‘This is the next problem for law enforcement: How do you stop that?’”

His second thought: “‘How were the victims being treated?’”

Were first responders able to simultaneously address the threat and triage the wounded?

Was there a system in place to quickly get victims to safety?

Fender, a Virginia native, was driving on Interstate 81 toward Wytheville on April 16, 2007, when news of a shooting at Virginia Tech University sounded over the radio. He turned toward Blacksburg. He arrived about 45 minutes after 32 people had been shot and killed.

His work on the scene — and his 30-plus year career with the F.B.I — offers a glimpse at what public safety officers, investigators and first responders in Las Vegas are still experiencing, days after hundreds of concert-goers were wounded, 58 people were murdered and the suspected gunman shot himself.

And his experience — personal and professional — shows how those directly affected by such a tragedy continue to relive horrible moments — how turning on a television years later can put someone back in an awful place.

Las Vegas

Why did he do this? Who else might be involved?

From Fender’s perspective, those two questions are the priorities for investigators at the moment.

And they’ll take time to answer.

To do so, investigators will look at every aspect of the gunman’s life. They’ll continue to interview friends, family, neighbors, coworkers and others he had contact with. They’ll analyze his phone and other devices to see who he’s contacted, when and why. They’ll retrace his international travel with the goal of understanding where he went and who he might have met.

In particular, Fender is curious about Stephen Paddock’s work with a predecessor company of defense contractor Lockheed Martin — does he have any security clearances that factor into the investigation?

And then there’s the location of the shooting — a large city with a lot of surveillance devices.

“Just imagine trying to collect all the surveillance photographs and film that exists of this guy’s movements on The Strip,” Fender said. “In conjunction with that, too, is to take that information, get it reviewed — and that’s very personnel-intensive and time-consuming — and then construct a timeline as to where he was moving about the city. ... That’s huge, especially in a place like Las Vegas where everything is filmed.”

In a situation where it appears there was a lone gunman, investigators have to challenge that notion and think outside the box. Could an accomplice have been in the crowd, or even among the wounded and dead?

But there are other things happening behind the scenes that people might gloss over.

“The morgue is very busy today, even as we speak,” Fender said.

“You can imagine what a gruesome task that is to have to autopsy ... 59 bodies,” he continued. “And then beginning the process of releasing bodies and personal affects that had to be cataloged, that were on the person’s body ... . ... And of course you’ve got to have an agent present there ... to take custody of that personal property and the rounds that are removed from the body.”

There’s ongoing evidence collection.

Investigators will continue to interview hundreds of people, and then make the difficult decision about when to stop — when they think they’ve collected as much as they can. The crime scene itself will continue to be pored over; items such as purses, shoes and drink coozies have to be inventoried.

There’s the outreach to victims and their families — providing support, mental health resources and grief counseling.

First responders and law-enforcement agents might need those resources, too.

“There’s multiple post-incident debriefings going on with first responders,” Fender said. “And I call it ‘the hug time for the big and bad.’ We all want to look at law enforcement as being sort of Captain America-type of person who’s so tough that nothing penetrates them — that’s not the case.

“There’s a time when police officers ... where it’s probably a good idea — very quickly, within a few days, if not hours — to bring those guys together and say, ‘You know what guys, you’ve been through hell, and it’s OK if you want to take the time to shed a tear or two, or talk about this, or give each other a hug, or whatever it is that makes you feel good — that’s OK.’”

Blacksburg

When Fender arrived in Blacksburg on April 16, 2007, he met with a state policeman who took him immediately to the crime scene.

He walked past gunshot victims lying still on the floor.

“Actually, I was with that state policeman as we took a second round through the crime scene — and ... we found (the shooter’s) backpack,” Fender said. “And the state police agent reached down and unzipped it, and there was the Glock (pistol). And not only that, but inside was the paperwork where he’d bought it at a local gun store ... .”

Fender, who specialized in countering threats posed by explosives, would later search the shooter’s dorm room for devices — there were none.

When he got home later that night, his wife met him in the garage with a change of clothes. The cleaning — the decontamination of a crime scene, disease-prevention — is another gruesome, time-intensive process that is often glossed over.

He told his children — who were in high school and middle school at the time, and who knew people at Virginia Tech — that if they ever found themselves near an active-shooter situation, they should run away, not shelter in place.

Fender isn’t “anti-gun” — he said people should be able to buy as many guns as they want. But they shouldn’t be allowed to own assault-style weapons and bump stocks, devices that dramatically increase the firing rate of semi-automatic weapons.

“For the victims, for the first responders who are having to deal with this, God bless them,” Fender said.

“Because there are devils that are being created in their minds that they’re changed forever.”

This story was originally published October 6, 2017 at 3:46 PM with the headline "This Lowcountry lawman understands Las Vegas — he responded to the Virginia Tech massacre."