Gunman a gambler and loner
"He's never drawn his gun, it makes no sense."
Eric Paddock, gunman's brother
UNITED STATES: Stephen Paddock appeared to be settling into a quiet life a few years ago when the
64-year-old apartment manager and avid gambler bought a home in a quiet Nevada retirement community about an hour’s drive from the Las Vegas Strip and his beloved casinos.
Those who knew Paddock say there was no sign he was capable of holing up in a room on the 32nd floor of a casino hotel, the Mandalay Bay, and opening fire with multiple guns on a country music festival, killing at least 59 people and wounding more than
520 in the worst mass shooting in modern US history.
‘‘He was a wealthy guy and he liked to play video poker and he liked to go on cruises,’’ the gunman’s seemingly baffled brother, Eric Paddock, told reporters from his doorstep in Orlando, Florida yesterday.
‘‘He’s never drawn his gun, it makes no sense.’’
He said he was aware that his brother had a couple of handguns he kept in a safe, and perhaps a long rifle, but no automatic weapons.
Police said they had recovered a total of 42 weapons belonging to Paddock, including 23 from the hotel room and 19 at his home in Mesquite, a small desert town popular with golfers and gamblers. Some were automatic weapons or semi-automatic rifles that had been illegally modified into machineguns. Several kilograms of ammonium nitrate, a fertiliser that can be turned into explosives such as those used in the 1995 Oklahoma bombing, were found in his car.
Eric Paddock described his brother as peaceful, saying he moved back to the red desert hills of Nevada because gambling was legal there and he hated central Florida’s humidity.
Paddock apparently lived in Mesquite with his girlfriend, who was in Tokyo at the time of the shooting. Las Vegas police said they were seeking to interview her when she returned. Authorities said she had no connection with the attack.
The brothers were last in touch in early September, exchanging text messages about power outages after Hurricane Irma slammed into Florida, where their mother still lives.
‘‘He had nothing to do with any political organisation and religious organisations’’, Eric Paddock said.
Their father was Patrick Benjamin Paddock, a bank robber who was on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Most Wanted list in the 1960s and essentially unknown to his sons. The shooter himself had no criminal record, Las Vegas police said.
In recent weeks, Stephen Paddock made gambling transactions worth tens of thousands of dollars, although it was unclear whether they were wins or losses, NBC News reported, citing unidentified law enforcement officials.
Public records pointed to an itinerant existence across the American West and Southeast: Florida, a few years in California, a few years in other parts of Nevada.
In early 2015, he bought a modest two-storey home in a new housing development for retirees on the dusty edge of Mesquite, which straddles Nevada’s border with Arizona. ‘‘It’s a nice, clean home and nothing out of the ordinary,’’ said Quinn Averett, a Mesquite police department spokesma.
The FBI said Paddock had no connection with international militant groups.
Before moving to Mesquite, Nevada, he lived in another town called Mesquite, in Texas, where he worked as the manager of an apartment complex called Central Park.
The Washington Post reported that Paddock had also worked as an accountant and had real estate investments.
In an address to the country, US President Donald Trump called the bloodbath ‘‘an act of pure evil’’. He ordered flags flown at half-staff.
While some in the crowd of
22,000 country music fans at the Route 91 festival hit the ground when the shooting began, others pushed for the crowded exits, shoving through narrow gates and climbing over fences as 40- to
50-round bursts of automatic weapons fire rained down on them.
The gunman appeared to fire unhindered for more than 10 minutes, according to radio traffic. Police frantically tried to locate him. Some thought the concert was being invaded by multiple shooters.
Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said the attack was the work of a ‘‘crazed lunatic full of hate’’.
The previous deadliest mass shooting in modern US history took place in June 2016, when a gunman who professed support for Muslim extremist groups opened fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people.