Stephen Paddock

Stephen Paddock
File:Stephen Craig Paddock.jpg Paddock in a photo posted to his girlfriend's Facebook page
Born	Stephen Craig Paddock (1953-04-09)April 9, 1953 Clinton, Iowa, U.S.
Died	October 1, 2017(2017-10-01) (aged 64) Paradise, Nevada, U.S.
Cause of death	Suicide by self-inflicted gunshot wound
Occupation(s)	Accountant, real estate investor, gambler
Known for	Perpetrator of the 2017 Las Vegas Strip shooting
Parent	Benjamin Hoskins Paddock
Details
Date	October 1, 2017 c. 10:05 – 10:15 p.m.
Location(s)	Las Vegas Strip, Paradise, Nevada, U.S.
Target(s)	Audience of the Route 91 Harvest music festival
Killed	59
Injured	546

Stephen Craig Paddock (April 9, 1953 – October 1, 2017) was an American mass murderer responsible for the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. He fired modified semi-automatic weapons from his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel into a crowd of approximately 22,000 concertgoers at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip on October 1, 2017.

Paddock, who lived in Mesquite, Nevada, died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The incident surpassed the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting as the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history, with 58 fatalities (excluding Paddock) and 546 injuries. Paddock's motive for the shooting is currently unknown.

Early years, education and career

Stephen Paddock was born in Clinton, Iowa. He grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and Sun Valley, California, as the eldest of four sons of Benjamin Hoskins Paddock. Benjamin was a bank robber who was arrested in 1960 when Stephen was seven years old. Benjamin was later convicted and escaped prison in 1969, subsequently appearing on the FBI's most-wanted list. Stephen was 15 years old at the time. According to his brother Eric, they never really knew their father as he was never with their mother.

In 1967 Paddock completed his studies at Richard E. Byrd Middle School, then graduated from John H. Francis Polytechnic High School in 1971, and from California State University, Northridge in 1977, with a degree in business administration.

Paddock worked for the federal government from about 1975 to 1985. He was a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service from 1976 to 1978. After that, he worked for six years as an Internal Revenue Service agent until 1984. Then, he was a federal auditor for one year, in 1985, focusing on defense contractors. Towards the end of the 1980s, Paddock worked for three years as an internal auditor for a company that later merged to form Lockheed Martin. His work career after this period is not entirely clear. He is known to have run a real-estate business with his brother Eric. He lived in the Greater Los Angeles Area and owned personal property in areas including Panorama City, Cerritos, and North Hollywood from the 1970s to early 2000s. He also owned rental properties around the country, including two rundown apartment buildings in the working-class neighborhood of Hawthorne, California. In addition, he owned an apartment complex in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite, which he sold in 2012.

Relatives said Paddock was worth at least $2 million when he sold off the real-estate business. Among his most profitable investments was an apartment complex purchased in 2004, which gave him more than half a million dollars in annual income by 2011. The IRS records show he made $5 million to $6 million in profits from its sale in 2015.

Paddock was a prolific gambler, but the extent to which he may have profited from it is not clear. He was not well known among high-stakes gamblers in Las Vegas and was not considered a "whale" by the casinos. His game of choice was the solitary video poker which he had played for over 25 years; unlike traditional poker which involves bluffing, the primary skill is mathematical precision calculating odds. He lived a mostly nocturnal life, gambling after dark and sleeping during the day; he generally disliked being out in the sun.

Personal life

According to court records, Paddock was married and divorced twice. He was first married from 1977 to 1979, and for the second time from 1985 to 1990, both marriages in Los Angeles County, California. Family members say he stayed on good terms with his ex-wives. His brother says that Paddock had no political or religious affiliations of any kind.

Paddock lived in Texas and in California, then in a retirement community in Melbourne, Florida, from 2013 to 2015. In 2016, he moved from Florida to another retiree home in Mesquite, Nevada, about 80 miles (130 km) northeast of Las Vegas. According to property records, he bought a newly constructed single-family home in Mesquite in January 2015, and sold his two-bedroom home in Melbourne. Paddock lived in Mesquite for several years with his Flipino-born girlfriend whom he met at the Atlantis in Reno, Nevada. According to neighbors, they also lived together in Reno. Many Mesquite residents recalled only seeing him around town; those familiar with Paddock described him as someone who did not speak much and kept a low profile. The local gun community never saw him at any of the gun clubs or shooting ranges, including makeshift ones in the nearby desert.

An Australian acquaintance said he met Paddock in the United States and in the Philippines. He described Paddock as intelligent and methodical. In his account, Paddock claimed to have won a lot of money using a betting strategy by applying algorithms to gambling on machines (not on tables). Paddock was conversant in gun laws and in defending his view of the Second Amendment. The acquaintance considered Paddock a generous man whenever he and his girlfriend visited him.

In 2010, Paddock applied for and received a U.S. passport. He went on 20 cruise ship voyages, visiting several foreign ports including in Spain, Italy, Greece, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. He was accompanied by his girlfriend on nine of them. They went to the Philippines together in 2013 and 2014. During the last year of his life they traveled on a cruise to the Middle East.

Paddock's only recorded interaction with law enforcement was a minor traffic citation years before the shooting, which he settled in court. According to court records, Paddock also sued the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas in September 2012, claiming he "slipped and fell on an obstruction on the floor" and was injured as a result; the lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice in October 2014.

During his last months, he reportedly smelled of alcohol, was despondent, and he is reported to have filled prescriptions for the anti-anxiety drug Valium (diazepam) in 2013, 2016, and 2017. According to a Business Insider article, “As it stands now, the link between diazepam and Paddock's actions is tenuous at best — though some celebrities have said otherwise.”

Two weeks before the attack, his girlfriend went to her native Philippines at his suggestion. Paddock wired her $100,000 to buy a house there. He was spotted in Las Vegas with another woman, reported by investigators to be a prostitute. It has been confirmed that she is not an accomplice, and is not considered a suspect. Her name has not been released. Two days prior to the shooting, Paddock was recorded by a home surveillance system driving alone to an area for target practice located near his home.

Las Vegas shooting

Main article: 2017 Las Vegas shooting

Audio recording of the attack, Mandalay Bay.

On the night of October 1, 2017, at 10:05 p.m., Paddock opened fire from his hotel room on a large crowd of concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, killing 58 people and wounding 546 others.

Paddock planned the attack meticulously. On September 25, six days beforehand, he checked in to a room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel, which overlooked the festival grounds. There were 23 rifles and one handgun found inside his room by the police afterwards, including four DDM4 assault rifles, three FN-15 rifles, one AR-15 assault rifle with forward front grip, one .308-caliber AR-10 battle rifle, and one AK-47 (all very expensive), including a large quantity of ammunition in special magazines, holding up to 75 rounds each. Two of the rifles were resting on bipods, and were equipped with high-tech telescopic sights. Twelve of the weapons were outfitted with bump fire stocks, a recently-available firearms accessory that allows semiautomatic rifles to fire rapidly, simulating fully-automatic gunfire. Audio recordings of the attack indicated Paddock used these stocks to fire at the crowd in rapid succession.

Six minutes before the attack on the concertgoers, at 9:59 p.m. Paddock – who placed a baby monitor camera on a service cart outside his room – fired about 200 rounds through his door, wounding an approaching hotel security guard. At 10:05 p.m. he began firing hundreds of rounds in rapid succession at the crowd of thousands below. He stopped shooting ten minutes later at 10:15 p.m. According to chronology of the events established by the authorities in the following days, the first two police officers reached the 32nd floor of the hotel at 10:17 p.m. and a minute later were shown the location of his door. Between 10:26 and 10:30 p.m. additional eight LVPD officers joined them and began clearing other suites along the hallway. At 10:55 p.m. eight SWAT team members entered the floor through the second stairwell nearest to Paddock’s suite. More than an hour after the first two officers arrived, at 11:20 p.m. the police breached his door with an explosive charge, and entered the room. Paddock was found dead inside his suite from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. In addition to the firearms and accessories found in Paddock's hotel suite, there was a note that reportedly included handwritten calculations about where he needed to aim to maximize his accuracy. The note featured only the actual distance to the target, his own elevation, and the bullet trajectory relative to the line of fire.

During an investigation, Ammonium nitrate, often used in improvised explosive devices, was found in the trunk of his car, along with 1,600 rounds of ammunition and 50 pounds (23 kg) of Tannerite, a binary explosive used to make explosive targets for gun ranges. However, investigators clarified that while Paddock had "nefarious intent" with the material, he did not appear to have assembled an explosive device.

According to police, Paddock acted alone. His motive is unknown. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed responsibility, but American law enforcement officials have given no evidence of a connection between Paddock and ISIL. No evidence has been found of any brain abnormality, according to autopsy results, though toxicology and other autopsy results have yet to be disclosed.