Las Vegas shooting: ‘Lone wolf’ from quiet place in the desert

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 at least a few years. He got his pilot licence, and had at least one single-engine aircraft registered in his name.

In early 2015, he bought a modest two-storey home in a new housing development for retirees on the dusty edge of Mesquite, a small desert town popular with golfers and gamblers on Nevada’s border with Arizona.

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“It’s a nice, clean home and nothing out of the ordinary,” Quinn Averett, a Mesquite police department spokesman, told reporters on Monday. Some guns and ammunition were found inside, though nothing remarkable in a region where gun ownership is high.

‘Sole actor’

Although the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the shooting, saying the perpetrator was “a soldier” who had converted to Islam, US officials said there was no evidence that he was tied to any international militant group. One official said security agencies were examining the IS claim. IS released two statements on its Aamaq news agency. Without naming Paddock, it said he had “executed the operation in response to calls to target countries of the coalition” batting the extremist group in Iraq and Syria.

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Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo, however, said, “Right now, we believe it’s a sole actor, a lone-wolf-type actor.” He said a motive had not yet been determined. He added: “We have no idea what his belief system was.”

Eric Paddock, brother of Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock, speaks to reporters near his home on Monday. Paddock told the Orlando Sentinel: “We are completely dumbfounded. We can’t understand what happened.” (Source: AP Photo)

Paddock’s brother Eric told The Daily Mail that there was “absolutely no indication he could do something like this”. Their father was Patrick Benjamin Paddock, a violent bank robber who was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list in the 1960s, NBC News reported.

“He [Stephen] has no political affiliation, no religious affiliation, as far as we know,” Eric said. “He was just a guy. Something happened, he snapped or something, he was just a guy.” Eric said the family was stunned by the news. “We’re bewildered and our condolences go out to the victims,” he said in a telephone interview, his voice trembling.

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Eric Paddock helped his brother move to escape Central Florida’s humidity to Nevada in order to be able to play more video poker two years ago, he told the Orlando Sentinel. The two were last in touch a few weeks ago, texting about power outages after Hurricane Irma hit Florida. Stephen Paddock had no criminal record other than a traffic infraction.

The woman friend

Police initially sought a woman believed to be Paddock’s roommate, Marilou Danley, as a “person of interest.” Detectives later made contact with her, and “do not believe she is involved with the shooting on the strip”. “Marilou Danley is no longer being sought out as a person of interest,” the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police said in a statement to CNN.

Image released by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department of Marilou Danley in connection to a shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas. (Source: Reuters)

Eric Paddock told The Daily Mail that Danley is Paddock’s girlfriend. Records as recent as 2015 list Paddock as single. Police and public records said he lived with Danley in the Nevada retirement community.

Danley, an Australian citizen, described herself as a “casinos professional,” a mother and grandmother on social media websites. She was traveling outside the country.

Before moving to Mesquite, Nevada, Paddock lived in another town called Mesquite in Texas. He was listed as manager of an apartment complex called Central Park.

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