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Las Vegas police name suspect in deadly attack Las Vegas police name suspect in deadly attack
(about 1 hour later)
Police have named Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old from Mesquite, Nevada, as the gunman who opened fire on a country music concert in Las Vegas, killing at least 50 people. Police named Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old from Mesquite, Nevada, as the suspect who opened fire from a high-rise hotel on a country music concert in Las Vegas and killed more than 50 people.
Paddock killed himself before police could reach him, said Sheriff Joe Lombardo. He had perpetrated the worst mass shooting in contemporary American history. Las Vegas sheriff Joe Lombardo said Swat officers found Paddock dead, apparently of suicide, on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. Officers found him with at least 10 rifles.
Paddock was a resident of a retirement and golf community of about 20,000 people about 80 miles north of Las Vegas and near the Arizona state line, a police spokesman confirmed. On the street below, the Vegas strip was the scene of the deadliest mass murder in modern American history. More than 500 people were taken to nearby hospitals, authorities said.
“We don’t have a lot on Mr Paddock,” a Mesquite police spokesman, Quinn Averett, said. Mesquite PD records held no report of any contact with Paddock, Averett said: no calls for service, no arrests, not even a record of a traffic stop. “I don’t know how he could stoop to this low point, hurting someone else,” Bruce Paddock, who identified himself as the suspect’s brother, told NBC News.
Mesquite is just minutes away from Bunkerville, Nevada, the site in 2014 of an armed standoff at the Bundy ranch between federal agents and a family and the citizen militia members who came to support them. The suspect was a resident of Mesquite, Nevada, a retirement and golf community of about 20,000 people about 80 miles north of Las Vegas near the Arizona state line, a police spokesman confirmed.
Mesquite typically sees about one murder a year, Averett said. “We don’t have a lot on Mr Paddock,” said the spokesman, Quinn Averett. Mesquite PD records showed no reports of any contact with the suspect, Averett said: no calls for service, no arrests, not even a record of a traffic stop.
Heavily armed police were seen searching Paddock’s home early on Monday morning. Mesquite’s police chief, Troy Tanner, said officers surrounded and entered the the one-story, three-bedroom home where Paddock lived with 62-year-old Marilou Danley. In Las Vegas, police there said, the suspect’s only run-in with law enforcement was a traffic violation.
Danley was not at the house, and police saw “no movement” inside before serving a search warrant at the ranch-style home in the Sun City Mesquite retirement community. Authorities were struggling to understand the motives behind the mass killing. An FBI agent, Aaron Rouse, told reporters the agency has “determined at this point no connection to international terrorist organization”.
Early on Monday, Las Vegas police cleared Danley of any involvement. “Marilou Danley is no longer being sought out as a person of interest,” the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement to CNN. “We have no idea what his belief system was,” said Lombardo. “Right now, we believe he was the sole aggressor, and the scene is static.”
A photo of the residence taken by an ABC correspondent after police entered the home showed the metal garage door crumpled in the driveway. Tanner said detectives from Las Vegas and North Las Vegas were at the scene. Eric Paddock, a man identified by several news outlets as the suspect’s brother, told reporters the family was “dumbstruck” and compared hearing the news to being “crushed by an asteroid”.
Public records listed previous addresses for Stephen Paddock in Texas and California, as well as a 2010 license to hunt and fish in Alaska. Paddock lived in central Florida as recently as 2015, according to media outlets in the state. Eric Paddock, who lives in Orlando, learned of his brother’s involvement when police called him early on Monday. He gave a statement to authorities, according to an interview he gave to a Florida affiliate of ABC, and said he didn’t know of any “affiliations” that would explain his brother’s actions.
Florida Today spoke to residents of Heritage Isle retirement community in Viera, where records show Paddock owned a two-bedroom house from 2013 until 2015. Mick Anderson, who bought the house from Paddock, said he never met or spoke with him. “We are completely dumbfounded. We can’t understand what happened,” he told the Orlando Sentinel. Speaking to a CBS reporter, he described his brother as “not an avid gun guy at all”, although he added that Stephen may have owned several handguns.
“The fact that he had those kinds of weapons is just, where the hell did he get automatic weapons?” Eric Paddock continued. “He has no military background or anything like that. He’s a guy who lived in a house in Mesquite, drove down and gambled in Las Vegas.”
He added the family, including the suspect’s elderly mother, were “freaked out” by the news. “They’re fucked up,” he said. “I’ve got a 90-year-old mother whose son just killed 50-plus people and now he’s dead.”
Heavily armed police were seen searching the suspect’s home early on Monday morning. Mesquite’s police chief, Troy Tanner, said officers surrounded and entered the the one-story, three-bedroom home where he lived with 62-year-old Marilou Danley.
Police saw “no movement” inside before serving a search warrant at the ranch-style home in the Sun City Mesquite retirement community. Photos of the residence showed a metal garage door crumpled in the driveway. Mesquite police said they ripped the door off while executing the warrant and that detectives from Las Vegas and North Las Vegas were at the scene.
Las Vegas police said Danley was out of the country at the time of the shooting and they had cleared her of any involvement. “Marilou Danley is no longer being sought out as a person of interest,” the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement to CNN.
Eric Paddock told a CBS news reporter Danley was his brother’s girlfriend and the family were relieved to hear she was unhurt. Bruce Paddock, who said he had not spoken to his brother in many years, said the family grew up in Sun Valley, California.
Public records listed previous addresses for Stephen Paddock in Texas and California, as well as a 2010 license to hunt and fish in Alaska. Paddock lived in central Florida as recently as 2015, according to media outlets there.
Florida Today spoke to residents of Heritage Isle retirement community in Viera, where records show the suspect owned a two-bedroom house from 2013 until 2015. Mick Anderson, who bought the house from Paddock, said he never met or spoke with him.
“It was all done through my realtor and his realtor,” Anderson told the newspaper. “The only thing I can tell you is that the documents were regularly late.”“It was all done through my realtor and his realtor,” Anderson told the newspaper. “The only thing I can tell you is that the documents were regularly late.”
Next-door neighbors Don and Sharon Judy said they saw Paddock and his girlfriend only rarely during the two years he owned the property. Next-door neighbors Don and Sharon Judy said they saw Paddock and his girlfriend only rarely in the two years he owned the property.
Eric Paddock, a man identified by several news outlets as the suspect’s brother, said the family was “dumbstruck” by news of the mass killing.
“We are completely dumbfounded. We can’t understand what happened,” he told the Orlando Sentinel. The newspaper reported that Eric Paddock, who lives in the central Florida city, had given a statement to police.
Speaking to a CBS reporter, Eric Paddock described the suspect as “not an avid gun guy at all.”
“The fact that he had those kinds of weapons is just, where the hell did he get automatic weapons?” he continued. “He has no military background or anything like that…He’s a guy who lived in a house in Mesquite, drove down and gambled in Las Vegas.”