U.S. law enforcement combs through Las Vegas shooter’s life
No ties to Daesh, thousands of dollars sent to Philippines, girlfriend to be questioned
LAS VEGAS— Marilou Danley, the girlfriend of the gunman in the Las Vegas mass shooting, is expected to return from the Philippines to the United States for questioning, a federal law enforcement official said Tuesday.
Authorities were scouring the personal and financial history of the gunman, Stephen Paddock, 64, after one of the deadliest mass shootings in the United States, which left 59 people dead and about 500 others injured Sunday.
Alaw enforcement official said Pad- dock wired thousands of dollars to the Philippines and the FBI was scrutinizing the transaction.
At least one of the rifles the gunman had in his hotel suite was outfitted with a “bump stock,” a device that would enable it to fire hundreds of rounds per minute, according to law enforcement.
Paddock had stationed himself in a 32nd-floor luxury suite of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino and fired into a crowd of thousands of people. Police found Paddock dead in his room at the hotel.
Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said Tuesday that Paddock had placed cameras inside and outside of his hotel room, including one on a service cart.
“I anticipate he was looking for anybody coming to take him into custody,” he said.
Federal authorities said there were no indications that Paddock had ties to any international terrorist organization, despite a claim of responsibility by Daesh, also knows as ISIS or ISIL.
Paddock had multiple semi-automatic rifles, weapons that fire a single round with each pull of the trigger. A fully automatic weapon, like a machine-gun, will quickly fire round after round with a single pull of the finger, until the user releases the trigger or empties the magazine.
Fully automatic weapons, tightly regulated by federal law since the 1930s, are much rarer than semi-automatic ones. Military versions of as- sault rifles often have a setting for fully automatic fire, but the versions made for the civilian market do not.
The rapid fire heard on recordings of the Las Vegas shooting suggested a fully automatic weapon and police officers called it that on radio traffic. But replacing a standard rifle stock, the part that rests against the shoulder, with a bump stock allows a semiautomatic rifle to fire at a rate comparable to a fully automatic rifle — much faster than a human user can pull and release the trigger. Bump stocks are legal and inexpensive, with some advertised for $99 (U.S.).
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday called Paddock “a sick man, a demented man.” He also said that there would be discussion about gun legislation but was not specific.