National Post (National Edition)
‘We are a nation in mourning’: Trump
FBI SEEKS MOTIVE, QUESTIONS VEGAS GUNMAN’S GIRLFRIEND
President Donald Trump visited the wounded victims of the Las Vegas shooter Wednesday and told them, “You are not alone.”
“America is truly a nation in mourning,” the president said, days after a gunman on the 32nd floor of a hotel and casino opened fire on the crowd at an outdoor country music festival below. The rampage killed at least 59 people and injured 527, many from gunfire, others from chaotic efforts to escape.
“We cannot be defined by the evil that threatens us or the violence that incites such terror,” Trump declared at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police headquarters. “We are defined by our love, our caring and our courage.”
Trump and first lady Melania Trump met privately earlier with victims of the shooting at a hospital, praising them and the doctors who treated them as he visited the reeling city.
“Our souls are stricken with grief for every American who lost a husband or a wife, a mother or a father, a son or a daughter. We know that your sorrow feels endless. We stand together to help you carry your pain. You are not alone. We will never leave your side,” he said.
Meanwhile, the girlfriend of Stephen Paddock, the gunman, said Wednesday she had no idea of the massacre he was plotting when he sent her on a trip abroad to see her family.
Marilou Danley issued a statement after returning from her native Philippines and being questioned for much of the day by FBI agents. She was out of the country for more than two weeks.
She said she was initially pleased when Paddock wired her money in the Philippines to buy a house for her family, but she later feared it was a way to break up with her.
“It never occurred to me in any whatsoever that he was planning violence against anyone,” Danley said in a statement read by her attorney Matthew Lombard outside FBI headquarters in Los Angeles.
“I knew Stephen Paddock as a kind, caring, quiet man,” the statement said. “He never said anything to me or took any action that I was aware of that I understood in any way to be a warning that something horrible like this was going to happen.
“I am devastated by the deaths and injuries that have occurred and my prayers go out to the victims and their families and all those who have been hurt by these awful events”
Danley, 62, spoke with the FBI for several hours as investigators struggled to get inside the mind of Paddock, a frustratingly opaque figure who carried out his high-rise massacre without leaving the plain-sight clues often found after major acts of bloodshed.
Danley is considered a critical witness in trying to decipher Paddock’s motive, according to a person familiar with the probe. Police have described her as a “person of interest,” though they have not suggested that she is considered an accomplice or involved in any way.
Investigators are busy reconstructing Paddock’s life, behaviour and the people he encountered in the weeks leading up to the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said. That includes examining his computer and cellphone.
But as of Wednesday, investigators were unable to explain what led Paddock to rain heavy fire down on a country music festival Sunday night from the windows of his room at the Mandalay Bay hotel casino. He killed himself as police closed in.
“This individual and this attack didn’t leave the sort of immediately accessible thumbprints that you find on some mass casualty attacks,” McCabe said.
The 64-year-old retired accountant quietly stockpiled an arsenal of high-powered weapons while pursuing a passion for high-stakes gambling at Nevada casinos, where his game of choice was video poker, a relatively solitary pursuit.
Neighbours described Paddock as friendly, but he wasn’t close to them.
“He was a private guy. That’s why you can’t find out anything about him,” his brother, Eric Paddock, said from his home in Florida. As for what triggered the massacre, the brother said: “Something happened that drove him into the pit of hell.”