More information is surfacing about the man who opened fire on a crowd of concertgoers in Las Vegas and killed at least 58 people.
Paddock’s family is dumbfounded by the news. His brother told Daily Mail that Paddock was “just a guy.”
Paddock stayed at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino since Thursday, Sept. 28, according to authorities. Police found 10 rifles in Paddock’s room.
Paddock rained down bullets from his 32nd-floor hotel window for several minutes, taking the lives of at least 58 people and wounding at least 515. Police found Paddock dead in his room when officers broke down the door. Authorities do not believe he had any accomplices.
Police say Paddock’s record was clean, except for a citation issued years ago that was handled in court.
Marilou Danley was identified as Paddock’s female companion. She was thought as a person of interest initially, but police have cleared her of any suspicion. She was out of the country when the shooting happened.
Paddock held a private pilots license, according to the FAA.
The barrage from a 32nd-floor window in the Mandalay Bay hotel into a crowd of 22,000 people lasted several minutes, causing panic. Some fleeing fans trampled each other as police scrambled to find the gunman.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the massacre, but U.S. officials expressed skepticism of that claim. Police said they could not make sense of any motivation for the attack.
The death toll, which police emphasized was preliminary, eclipsed last year’s massacre of 49 people at an Orlando nightclub by a gunman who pledged allegiance to the ISIS terrorist group.
Shocked concertgoers, some with blood on their clothing, wandered the streets afterward.
Police said they had no information about Paddock’s motive, that he had no criminal record and was not believed to be connected to any militant group. Paddock killed himself before police entered the hotel room he was firing from, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters.
“We have no idea what his belief system was,” Lombardo said.
Two senior U.S. government officials told Reuters that Paddock’s name was not on any database of suspected terrorists and that there was no evidence linking him to any international terrorist group.
One of the two U.S. officials discounted a claim of responsibility that was made by ISIS. There was reason to believe that Paddock had a history of psychological problems, the official said.
In its claim, ISIS said that the gunman was a recent convert, according to the group’s news agency Amaq. Its claim did not include the gunman’s name and showed no proof. In the past, the group has also claimed responsibility for attacks without providing evidence.
Lombardo said there were more than 10 rifles in the room where Paddock killed himself. He had checked into the hotel on Thursday.
Police found several more weapons when they searched Paddock’s home in Mesquite, which is about 82 miles northeast of Las Vegas, Mesquite police spokesman Quinn Averett told reporters.
The dead included one off-duty police officer, Lombardo said. Two on-duty officers were injured, including one who was in stable condition after surgery and one who sustained minor injuries, Lombardo said.
‘Just Kept Going on’
Video of the attack showed panicked crowds fleeing as sustained rapid gunfire ripped through the area.“People were just dropping to the ground. It just kept going on,” said Steve Smith, a 45-year-old visitor from Phoenix, Arizona, who had flown in for the concert. He said the gunfire went on for an extended period of time.
“Probably 100 shots at a time,” Smith said. “It would sound like it was reloading and then it would go again.”
Las Vegas’s casinos, nightclubs, and shopping draw some 3.5 million visitors from around the world each year and the area was packed with visitors when the shooting broke out shortly after 10 p.m. local time.
Shares of U.S. casino operators fell in morning trading on Wall Street, with MGM Resorts International, which owns the Mandalay Bay, down 3.5 percent. Shares of Melco Resorts & Entertainment Ltd, Wynn Resorts Ltd, and Las Vegas Sands Corp changed little.
Mike McGarry, a financial adviser from Philadelphia, was at the concert when he heard hundreds of shots ring out.
“It was crazy - I laid on top of the kids. They’re 20. I’m 53. I lived a good life,” McGarry said. The back of his shirt bore footmarks, after people ran over him in the panicked crowd.
The shooting broke out on the final night of the three-day Route 91 Harvest festival, a sold-out event featuring top acts such as Eric Church, Sam Hunt, and Jason Aldean.
‘We’re Horrified’
The suspected shooter’s brother, Eric Paddock, said the family was stunned.“We have no idea. We’re horrified. We’re bewildered and our condolences go out to the victims,” Eric Paddock said in a brief telephone interview, his voice trembling. “We have no idea in the world.”
As with previous U.S. mass shootings, the incident sparked anger among advocates for gun control. The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the right to bear arms, and gun-rights advocates staunchly defend that provision.
The rampage was reminiscent of a mass shooting at a Paris rock concert in November 2015 that killed 89 people, part of a wave of coordinated attacks by Islamist militants in which 130 people were killed.
