Before killing dozens, wounding hundreds more in Las Vegas, gunman called North Texas home 

At least 23 firearms, including rifles affixed with a scope and a handgun, were found in his two-room hotel suite and 19 were discovered in his Nevada home.

A 64-year-old man who killed nearly 60 people at a Las Vegas music festival did not have much interaction with law enforcement in Nevada — or in North Texas, where he lived for several years, authorities say.

On Tuesday, officials announced the death of another victim bringing the toll to 59. Paddock had initially been counted among his victims. At least 500 more people were wounded. At least 31 people remained in critical condition Tuesday, and dozens more were still hospitalized.

Law enforcement clarified Tuesday night that Paddock was responsible for the deaths of 58 others, and not 59 as previously reported.

Paddock ended the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history by killing himself in a 32nd-floor room of the Mandalay Bay hotel-casino across from the concert grounds before SWAT officers reached him.

At least 23 firearms, including rifles affixed with a scope and a handgun, were found in his two-room hotel suite, the Clark County Sheriff's Office said.

Paddock lived in Mesquite, Texas, in the late 1990s and early 2000s and had connections to three properties in the Dallas suburb including an apartment complex he once owned, public records show. The property was worth more than $6 million when he sold it about five years ago, according to county records.

Eric Paddock said his brother, a high-stakes gambler, was not an "avid gun guy."

Stephen Paddock
Stephen Paddock(Family handout photo)

"The fact that he had those kind of weapons is just, just — where the hell did he get automatic weapons?" Eric Paddock said. "He has no military background or anything like that."

He said his brother had "no affiliation, no religion, no politics."

"He never cared about any of that stuff," Eric Paddock said. "He was a guy who had money. He went on cruises and gambled."

Eric Paddock said the brothers were not close, but that he had received a text from Stephen Paddock showing him that he had won $40,000 on a slot machine.

He described his brother as a multimillionaire and said they had business dealings and owned property together. He said he was not aware of any gambling debts, and public records offered no hint of financial distress.

Paddock's father, who is dead, was a notorious bank robber who tried to run down an FBI agent with his car in Las Vegas in 1960 and was on the agency's most-wanted list after he escaped from a federal prison in Texas in 1968.

Stephen Paddock was a teenager when an FBI poster issued after the escape said his father, Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, had been "diagnosed as psychopathic."

But police in Mesquite, Texas, said they had never dealt with complaints against Stephen Paddock "in any way."

{"type":"video","title":"Dallas News Video","author_name":"Dallas News","_id":"FqZmp2YzE6Rqji8yVD1be6jPRbVRfKm2","provider_name":"Ooyala","html":"


Paddock called for officers' help twice in 2005, while he was working at the apartment complex he once managed, according to police records. One report was about a theft from a truck bed; another was about a parking violation. More calls for assistance were made from the apartment complex while he worked there, but Paddock's name doesn't appear in other records.

When Mesquite resident Jorge Huertas saw the news about Sunday's rampage, he was struck first by the fact he'd had a room on an upper floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel last week.

Then, when he saw Stephen Paddock's photo connected to the massacre, he recalled that between 2004 and 2014, Paddock had visited the house next door to him on Clear Lake Lane in Mesquite.

Paddock had bought that home for his mother, Irene Hudson, and had transferred ownership to her in 2009.

"I tried to help her a lot," Huertas said. "Especially when she was getting old. She sent me some oranges after her other son moved her to Florida. She was a nice lady."

Before anyone lived in the house, Huertas said, he'd parked his truck there, which upset Stephen Paddock. Though Paddock came from out-of-state to look in on his mother occasionally, he didn't talk to neighbors.

"She told me he was no good, that he had problems," Huertas said. "He was not social. She told me he was not there too much. I did not see him too much."

But another brother was a more frequent visitor. And when Irene Hudson reached her mid-80s and couldn't handle the responsibilities of the two-story house, he moved her to Florida.

"None of them were social," said another decade-long neighbor, Maria Almeida. "Toward the end, she wouldn't even come outside for a long time. We'd wonder 'Is that lady still alive?'"

Paddock rented a hangar at the Mesquite Metro Airport between 2007 and 2010 but only stored a plane there. Police said he paid his rent on time, and airport files do not indicate any "negative interactions" with him.

He earned a private pilot's license in 2003, records show. Under FAA rules, pilots who are 40 or older are required to undergo a medical examination every two years. Paddock's last exam was in 2008, so even though he had a license, he was no longer authorized to fly.

Cynthia Godfrey, director of the Mesquite Metro Airport, said records indicate Paddock had a light plane manufactured by Cirrus Aircraft.

"He isn't anybody that stuck out in my head as being a troublemaker that we had issues with," said Godfrey, who has worked at the airport for 20 years. "He was just a normal tenant that blended in with the other 300 that are here."

A Lockheed Martin spokesman said Paddock worked for its predecessor company from 1985 to 1988.

"We're cooperating with authorities to answer questions they may have about Mr. Paddock and his time with the company," the spokesman said, declining to release more information.

In 2010, while living in Texas, he got a hunting and fishing license in Alaska. Records indicate he moved to Melbourne, Fla. before heading to Reno, Nev. and then settling in Mesquite, Nev. where he last lived.


A spokeswoman for the Office of Personnel Management said Tuesday that Paddock's employment included about two years as a mail carrier from 1976 to 1978.


The information helped complete the timeline surrounding his life. Paddock graduated from college in 1977 from Cal State Northridge and also worked for a defense contractor in the late 1980s.

Paddock had been married at least twice, and divorced in 1980 and 1990.

Once of his ex-wives, who now lives in Los Angeles, told police that the pair had been married for six years and divorced 27 years ago. The couple had no children, the New York Times reported. 

He lived with his girlfriend, Marilou Danley, 62, in the Sun City house. Danley worked as a "high limit hostess" at the Atlantis Casino in Reno from 2010 to 2013, according to her LinkedIn profile. The casino confirmed her previous employment to the Times.

Immediately after the massacre, authorities searched urgently for Danley. After they learned she was out of the country they said they planned to talk to her when she returns to the United States.

Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said Tuesday that Danley is a person of interest and the FBI is working to contact her in the Philippines.

Paddock wired $100,000 to an account in the Philippines in the week before the shooting, NBC News reported.

Motive under investigation

The Clark County sheriff called the Las Vegas attacker a "lone wolf," but he said a check of federal and state databases showed he was not on authorities' radar as a risk before the bloodbath.

Without knowing of any warnings, Lombardo couldn't speculate on the killer's motive and said officials haven't found anything such as a manifesto.

"I can't get into the mind of a psychopath at this point," he said.

Lombardo said Tuesday that the shooting was "obviously premeditated," and that events like this have to inform law enforcement training.

“The world has changed. Who would had ever imagined the situation, I couldn’t imagine it," he said. "And for this individual to take it upon himself to create this chaos and harm is unspeakable."

Paddock had been at the Mandalay Bay on Sept. 28, and carried his numerous weapons concealed in more than 10 suitcases up to the room, Lombardo said.

Among the 23 firearms found in the room were rifles ranging from .223- to .308-caliber, including some that were thought to have been modified in some way.

Officials are still investigating whether anyone entered the room to clean, but said Paddock did order room service.

Paddock used multiple rifles during the shooting, and officials found unspent ammunition in the room. They also found cameras outside and inside the room, presumably set up so Paddock could watch who was coming, Lombardo said.

In addition the firearms, authorities found ammonium nitrate, the same chemical that exploded at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, in 2013,  in Paddock's vehicle.

In his Mesquite home, officials retrieved 19 firearms, several thousand rounds of ammunition, a few pounds of the commercially available explosive Tannerite and electronics, which will be analyzed.

Law enforcement and SWAT were also investigating a house in Reno, Nev., that Paddock owned.

A dozen officers carrying rifles were at the house in an upscale neighborhood near the state line with California on Monday afternoon. They closed a two-block stretch around the house in a neighborhood that has a community clubhouse with a tennis court and a billiard room.

Next-door neighbor Dee McKay said she last saw Paddock in June after he moved to Mesquite, Nev.

She says Paddock said he was a professional gambler and that the home's garage had a safe the size of a refrigerator.

The sheriff's office has stressed that Paddock was the only shooter.

For now, the FBI said it doesn't suspect the shooting was connected to an international terrorist group and it's offered no explanation for what led to Sunday's calamitous violence.

'Like shooting fish in a barrel'

The shooting occurred on the final night of the three-day Route 91 Harvest Festival, which has been held for the last four years on a 15-acre lot near the Mandalay.

Video posted on social media showed country artist Jason Aldean midsong at the open-air venue when bursts of automatic gunfire rang out. The shooting went on for about 10 seconds before the music stopped.

"I quite frankly was looking so forward to coming back here today and doing the show," said country music artist Jake Owen, who was on stage with Aldean when the shooting began.

Owen told CNN the gunfire Paddock rained down on the crowd of more than 22,000 people unleashed chaos as bullets pierced nearby trailers and thousands of people scrambled for cover.

"It's like shooting fish in a barrel from where he was," Owen said. "I hate to use that sort of term."

He said the staccato of automatic gunfire continued "nonstop" for about 10 minutes.

As gunfire rang out, some officers assigned to the event took it upon themselves to help the concert-goers get away from the grounds, while others went to Mandalay Bay, Lombardo said.

A team of six officers conferred with security and went up to the 29th floor and worked their way up until they found the room they thought the shooter was in. Calls from other hotel guests to security helped officers pinpoint where the gunfire was coming from.

As the officers approached they were met by gunfire, and backed off. At some point, Paddock fired through the doorway and wounded a hotel security guard in the leg.

SWAT arrived on scene, broke down the door and found Paddock dead inside.

Down on the ground, people scrambled to hide, unable to guess at where the gunfire was coming from.

Some people died at the concert venue, some outside, and some who had been shot continued to run but died several blocks away. Injuries ranged from gunshot wounds to people who had been trampled, Lombardo said.

The number of injuries was revised downward Tuesday after the realization that some people had been counted twice.

Throughout the panic and the chaos there were also heroic acts. Videos showed people providing medical aid and providing transportation to get victims to the hospital.

'An act of pure evil'

At a news conference Monday morning, President Donald Trump described the shooting as "an act of pure evil."

"I know we are searching for some kind of meaning in the chaos, some kind of light in the darkness," he said. "The answers do not come easy."

Former President Barack Obama was among those who tweeted their condolences for the victims.

One fund for the victims had raised close to $4 million in a day.

The death toll makes the tragedy the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. In June 2016, a gunman who is believed to have been inspired by the Islamic State killed 49 people at an Orlando nightclub.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a written statement Monday morning that it did not believe there were any credible threats for any other public venues in the country. But the department said there could be heightened security in place places or at public events as an added precaution.

It's unclear how the Vegas shooting might affect legislation in the U.S. House to ease restrictions on gun silencers, which critics argue would make it harder for police to detect and respond to mass shootings.

Currently, anyone who wants to buy a silencer must go through a nine-month approval process and pay a $200 tax. But the U.S. House is edging close to a vote on legislation, which has bipartisan support among Texas lawmakers, to remove the tax. Purchasers would undergo a less extensive, instant background check if the legislation is enacted.

Backers — including the NRA, for which the bill is a top priority — say muffling the sound of gunshots is meant to protect hunters' hearing. They've dubbed it the Hearing Protection Act.

The House postponed its debate on the issue over the summer, when a gunman open-fired at a congressional baseball game. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., made an emotional return to the House last week, four months after suffering near-fatal injuries.

The owner of a gun shop in Mesquite, Nev., says the Las Vegas shooter bought firearms there and never gave any indication that he might have been unstable.

Guns & Guitars general manager Christopher Sullivan said in a statement Monday that Paddock showed no signs of being unfit to buy guns.

Store spokesman Shawn Vincent declined comment on how many guns Paddock bought and said those details could only be shared with authorities.

Sullivan says all necessary background checks and procedures were followed under local, state and federal laws and that he's cooperating fully with law enforcement.

Staff writers Steve Thompson, Jennifer Emily, Julieta Chiquillo, Nicole Cobler and Tom Steele and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Ray Leszcynski. Ray has written about the people, cities and ISDs of Dallas' northern and eastern suburbs for more than eight years. He spent several years as a news editor and also has an extensive background in sports. Ray has a degree in journalism from the University of Tulsa. @RayLeszcynski



In the meantime, you can provide feedback here.

Crime in The News

Crime in The News


By signing up you agree to our privacy policy

BlueConic Segments

BlueConic Profile Data