At Least 59 Dead, Over 500 Wounded In Shooting At Las Vegas Country Music Festival.
The deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
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In the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, the sniper-style gunfire rained down from the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino on Sunday evening, police said. The gunman, identified as Stephen Paddock, 64, is believed to be a “lone wolf” and was killed after authorities confronted him on the 32nd floor of the hotel, police said.
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Killed in the Las Vegas massacre: The first of 59 dead and 527 hurt are identified including a kindergarten teacher, an ex-cheerleader, a wife who died in her husband's arms, two Army vets, and a nurse who saved his surgeon wife
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| Victims, left to right, top row: Sonny Melton, 29, who died saving his surgeon wife Heather's (pictured together, left) life, Lisa Romero, Neysa Tonks, Susan Smith, Jordan McIldoon, 23, Melissa Ramirez and Bailey Schweitzer. Second row, left to right: Quinton Robbins, 20, Jennifer Irvine, Angie Gomez, Jessica Klymchuk, 28, Adrian Murfitt, 35, Jenny Parks, 19, and Charleston Hartfield. Third row, left to right: Rachael Parker, 33, Carrie Barnette, Dana Gardner, Rhonda LeRocque, Denise Salmon Burditus (pictured with her husband), 50, John Phippen and Sandy Casey, 35. They are among the 59 people killed when 64-year-old Stephen Craig Paddock of nearby Mesquite, Nevada began shooting from his hotel room across the street at the Mandalay Bay Casino. Another 527 people were injured in what is now the deadliest mass shooting in US history. |
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The man who shot dead 59 people and injured 527 others in Las Vegas on Sunday night was a multimillionaire who took a huge arsenal of 16 guns into his Mandalay Bay hotel room, which he transformed into an elaborate sniper's nest before opening fire on a country music festival on Monday. Stephen Paddock (pictured right), 64, had made millions from real estate deals, according to his brother Eric Paddock; he also owned two planes and several properties across the US, and seemed normal apart from his passion for gambling large sums. He took 16 of those guns into his Mandalay Bay suite over several days and set up two rifles on tripods at windows overlooking the Route 91 Harvest country music festival. Thousands of rounds of ammunition were also found in the suite, enabling him to fire for at least 72 minutes. His car had traces of a fertilizer used in bomb-making. Paddock had lived in 27 residences in Nevada, Florida and Texas as an adult, but other than that he had apparently lived a quiet and unremarkable life - and the reason for his assault remains a mystery.
With no children and two amicable divorces at his back, Paddock began to occupy his time with gambling - both in Las Vegas and online.
In fact, it eventually became a major source of income.
'It's like a job for him. It's a job where you make money,' Eric Paddock (above) said. 'He was at the hotel for four months one time. It was like a second home.'
'He’s known,' he added. 'He's a top player. He's the small end of the big fish.'
He also said that his brother had enjoyed playing high-stakes poker with $100 hands.
Eric didn't know whether his brother was suffering financial issues or had gambling debts and speculated that he could lose $1 million and still have enough to live on.
But in the weeks before his meticulously planned and terrifying attack, Paddock had gambled more than $10,000 a day - sometimes even more than $30,000 - in Las Vegas casinos.
That information came from someone who had seen Paddock's Multiple Currency Transaction Reports (CTR) and a casino gaming executive, NBC reported.
A CTR is a report that casinos must file for 'each transaction in currency involving cash-in and cash-out of more than $10,000 in a gaming day,' according to the IRS.
The reports don't say whether he lost the money or not.
Stephen Paddock's father, Benjamin - who was diagnosed as a 'psychopath' - was convicted in 1961 to twenty years incarceration. He escaped in 1968 and while on the lam committed another bank robbery in 1969.
The robber spent eight years on the FBI's Most Wanted list before being apprehended in 1978 in Eugene, Oregon, where he had opened a bingo parlor. He was paroled in 1979.
State authorities charged him with racketeering in the 1980s. Mr. Paddock settled the civil charges and avoided jail after paying $623,000, and he eventually left Oregon for Texas, where he lived until his death in 1998.
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