Family of gunman Stephen Paddock bewildered by itinerant life out west
At first glance, it seemed Stephen Paddock, 64, was set for a quiet life in a desert retirement community near his beloved casinos where he bought a home in 2015.
From there, it was an hour’s drive to Las Vegas, where he would embark on the biggest mass shooting in recent US history.
Public records point to an itinerant existence across the American West: a few years in coastal California, a few years in other parts of Nevada. Paddock had a hunting licence in Texas, where he lived for a time. He had a pilot’s licence and had at least one single-engine aircraft registered in his name.
In early 2015, he bought a home on the edge of Mesquite, a small desert town popular with golfers and gamblers that straddles the Nevada border with Arizona.
Eric Paddock, the gunman’s brother, said the family was bewildered as to what drove him to mass murder. Mr Paddock told the Orlando Sentinel he had helped his brother move to Nevada two years ago to escape central Florida’s humidity and play more video poker. The two were last in touch a few weeks ago about power failures after Hurricane Irma.
A former neighbour, Sharon Judy in Viera, Florida, told the newspaper that Stephen Paddock was a friendly man who had described himself as a professional gambler. He once showed Ms Judy a picture of himself winning a US$20,000 (Dh73,461) slot machine jackpot, she said. Paddock had no criminal record other than a traffic infraction.
Before moving to Mesquite in Nevada, he lived in another town called Mesquite, in Texas, where he was listed as the manager of an apartment complex called Central Park.
Records as recently as 2015 list Paddock as single. Public records said he lived with a woman named Marilou Danley in Nevada. Police said Ms Danley was travelling outside the country and had no connection with the attack.
Paddock moved into a Nevada retirement resort in 2015 and his family said there was no indication of the mass murder to come