– Fifty-eight people were killed and 515 injured after a shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada
– 64 year old local Stephen Paddock, is said to be responsible for the shooting
– Paddock opened fire from a 32nd floor room of Mandalay Bay Hotel after 10pm Sunday night
– Police say they breached Paddock’s room and found him dead inside alongside an ‘arsenal’ of weapons
– Cops located his girlfriend Marilou Danley for questioning, but don’t believe she’s involved in the shooting
– A law enforcement source said they found 18-20 weapons in the room, including at least one fully automatic rifle
– Paddock was a multimillionaire who made his money in real estate, his brother Eric said
– He was also a big gambler
– It’s the deadliest shooting in U.S. history – eclipsing last year’s massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida
At least 58 people are dead and 515 injured after a 72-minute shooting by a lone-wolf gunman who unleashed thousands of rounds of ammunition onto a Las Vegas music festival from a hotel room 1,200 feet away.
Police say 64-year-old Stephen Craig Paddock used automatic weapons to rain down gunfire on a crowd of 22,000 people attending the Route 91 Harvest Festival Sunday night, from his room across the street in the Mandalay Bay hotel.
Headliner Jason Aldean was in the middle of his set just after 10pm when a rumble of gunfire rang out, the sounds of screams and stampeding humans cutting through the country music.
It took police an hour and 12 minutes from the first 911 call to locate Paddock in the building.
They were able to figure out that the shots were coming from the Mandalay Bay, so they worked their way from the bottom up. Once they reached the 32nd floor, authorities say they knew they were in the right place. Why remains unclear, but they could have possible smelt or heard gunfire.
They used explosives to blow the door off his room, but by then it was too late – Paddock had shot himself dead. It’s unclear how long after he first started shooting that Paddock committed suicide.
Inside the room they found an ‘arsenal’ of 18-20 firearms and a large cache of ammunition, a law enforcement source told the Wall Street Journal.
The source said that they found at least one fully automatic rifle, AR-15-style rifles and AK-47-style rifles.
The following morning, pictures of the Mandalay Bay tower showed two windows on the 32nd floor were shattered.
It’s believed that Paddock was staying in a large suite or connected rooms, and used both to fire down on the crowd from both vantage points. Police say he used a hammer-like device to smash the windows.
Following the shooting, police raided Paddock’s home in a retirement community in Mesquite, Nevada where he lived with his girlfriend, 62-year-old Marilou Danley.
Danley was initially called a person of interest in the shooting, because she appeared to have checked into the hotel with him. But when police called her after the shooting, they found out she has been out of the country and that Danley had used her ID to check into the hotel. They no longer believe she had anything to do with the massacre, but plan to interview when she gets back in the country. A friend told the Reno Gazette-Journal that Danley is in the Phillipines.
He had been staying in Las Vegas since Thursday, but hotel staff who had been in and out of his room never saw signs of his weapons
Investigations are still ongoing and police have not yet determined a motive. he was not believed to be connected to any militant group, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the gunman was a recent convert to Islam. But officials say there is no evidence that Paddock was connected to any international terror organization.
What will likely raise suspicions is Paddock’s excessive gambling in recent weeks.
Multiple senior law enforcement officials and a casino executive who spoke with NBC News said that Paddock had on multiple occasions in the past week weeks, gambled amounts greater than $20,000 or $30,000.
This is according to documents that the casinos are required to maintain for ‘each transaction in currency involving cash-in and cash-out of more than $10,000 in a gaming day.’
It’s unclear if Paddock won or lost a great amount.
His brother Eric says that his brother was a multimillionaire who made most of his fortune through investing in real estate. He also worked as an accountant before retiring.
In an interview with DailyMail.com, Eric said that something must have happened to his brother to make him snap.
‘He was just a guy. Something happened, he snapped or something,’
Eric said from his home in Orlando, Florida.
-Dailymail
