Vegas shooter a compulsive video poker gambler who took Valium

WASHINGTON: Las Vegas mass killer Stephen Paddock was a compulsive player of video poker who took the anxiety drug Valium, CNN reported on Monday.

The report gave new details about the background of the 64-year-old, who, on Oct 1, gunned down 58 people and wounded almost 500 for reasons that investigators have not been able to fathom.

Paddock, in a 2013 court deposition, said he was “the biggest video poker player in the world”, said CNN, which obtained a copy of the 97-page document.

The deposition was turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the network said.

It was part of a civil suit against the Cosmopolitan Hotel, where he slipped and fell on a walkway in 2011.

“Nobody played as much and as long as I did,” Paddock said, adding that, in 2006, he gambled on average “14 hours a day, 365 days a year”.

“I’ll gamble all night,” he said, in what CNN called the first account of his life in his own words. “I sleep during the day.”

Paddock at times seemed to come off as arrogant and sarcastic during the deposition.

CNN said he might sometimes have wagered up to US$1 million (RM4.2 million) a night.

When he gambled, he rarely drank alcohol, his testimony said, because “at the stakes I play, you want to have all your wits about you, or as much wit as I have”.

In another development, Las Vegas Sheriff Joseph Lombardo on Monday said a security guard injured by Paddock was shot six minutes before the gunman opened fire on the crowd.

Security guard Jesus Campos was hailed as a hero and credited with stopping the assault on the crowd by turning the gunman’s attention to the hotel hallway.

The new revelation raises questions about why police could not locate Paddock sooner, and indeed why he ended his attack.

Paddock, who police said committed the worst shooting in recent United States history, owned numerous properties and had no known associations with political, radical or hate groups. AFP