Gunman was accountant, poker player
The man who carried out the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history was a retired accountant with a taste for high-stakes poker who had moved to Nevada just a couple of years earlier.
While investigators were still piecing together the attack by Stephen Paddock at a country music concert that left at least 59 dead and 527 wounded, the gunman’s younger brother said the gunman had shown no signs of volatility.
The brother, Eric Paddock, added that he was “dumbfounded” as he searched for an explanation for why his brother, an affluent man — who appeared to be enjoying retired life taking cruises and visiting casinos — would decide to carry out such a brutal attack.
“There’s absolutely no way I can even conceive that my brother would shoot a bunch of
people he didn’t even know,” Eric Paddock told the USA TODAY Network in an interview. “There’s no rationale. There’s nothing anywhere that said why he did this.”
Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said officers determined the gunshots were coming from a room on the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay complex on the Las Vegas Strip. Authorities said it appeared Paddock killed himself.
Police said 23 weapons were found in the gunman’s hotel room. Investigators also found 10 suitcases in the room that they believe were used to bring the arsenal of weapons into the hotel.
Also an undisclosed amount of ammonium nitrate, a type of fertilizer that has been used as a bomb component — most notably in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing — was found in the suspect’s vehicle parked at the hotel.
Police also found two tripods positioned at the hotel windows in what appeared to be a fullyequipped sniper’s nest to take better aim at the crowd below. It appeared he had hammered out the windows of the room before shooting, authorities said.
Hundreds of rounds of ammunition were among the suspect’s possessions, a cache that could have sustained him in the assault, the official said.
“Right now, we believe it’s a sole actor, a lone-wolf-type actor,” Lombardo said.
Lombardo added that investigators have yet to determine a possible motive for the rampage.
Investigators, however, confirmed they have begun probing the gunman’s gambling habits. Authorities are reviewing the recent transfers of thousands of dollars involving the suspect and links to gambling activities that would have tripped mandatory government notification requirements, the federal law enforcement official said.
Investigators believe Paddock used the vantage point to fire on the 22,000 country music fans who gathered for the Route 91 Harvest Festival.
Lombardo said law enforcement authorities had located a “person of interest” who he named as Marilou Danley, believed to be the suspect’s companion. He said Danley was outside the country, but they were gathering info from her.
The Islamic State claimed after the attack that Paddock was one of the terror group’s “soldiers.” But Aaron Rouse, chief of the FBI’s Las Vegas office, said investigators have found no links with the gunman to terror groups.
The owners of Guns & Guitars in Mesquite confirmed selling guns to Paddock more than once. But Janis and Mike Sullivan, the co-owners of the shop, noted they do not sell automatic weapons and are not licensed to do so.
“He passed every federal background check, every time he bought a gun,’’ Janis Sullivan, 67, told USA TODAY.
Paddock told the USA TODAY Network that their late father, Benjamin Paddock, was a convicted bank robber, and they were raised without him for most of their childhood.
He later escaped from a Texas prison and for a time was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. He was captured in 1978 in Oregon, where he was running a bingo parlor.
“He passed every federal background check, every time he bought a gun.”
Janis Sullivan, gun shop owner
Peter reported from Nevada, Glenn from Orlando, Johnson from Washington and Madhani from Chicago. Contributing: Tess Sheetz, Wayne T. Price, Sarah Litz, Kevin McCoy, John Bacon and A.J. Perez.