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'Stephen Paddock was a guy who had money,' brother of Las Vegas shooter denies possibility of IS connection

The Terrorist Organisation Islamic State Claimed Responsibility For The Las Vegas Shooting Which Left 59 Dead And Over 500 Injured. But The Shooter Stephen Paddock Has Nothing In His History Which Could Explain Any Connection Or Affiliation With The Terrorist Organisation.

News Nation Bureau | Edited By : Arshi Aggarwal | Updated on: 03 Oct 2017, 07:40:54 AM
Las Vegas attack: Stephen Paddock had no religious affiliation

New Delhi:

The terrorist organisation Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Las Vegas shooting which left 59 dead and over 500 injured. But the shooter Stephen Paddock has nothing in his history which could explain any connection or affiliation with the terrorist organisation. 

“No affiliation, no religion, no politics. He never cared about any of that stuff. He was a guy who had money. He went on cruises and gambled,” his bewildered brother, Eric Paddock, told reporters on Monday. 

And yet Stephen Paddock was in the 17th floor room of Mandalay Resort with 17 guns staging one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in modern US history. He had 17 guns with him in the room and shot himself to death before the police reached him. 

Read | Las Vegas shooting: 58 killed, 515 injured; US denies ISIS connection

According to a report, the shooter "lived in a tidy Nevada retirement community where the amenities include golf, tennis and bocce. He was a multimillionaire real-estate investor, recently shipped his 90-year-old mother a walker and liked to travel to Las Vegas to play high-stakes video poker."

Public records offered no hint of financial distress or criminal history. Stephen Paddock had worked previously as an accountant and never served in the military and was “not an avid gun guy at all,” though he had a couple of handguns and a long gun, his brother revealed.

The shooter had been in and out of touch with his family regularly through text messages. But his brother had not physically spoken to him or met him since last six months. 

Even experienced FBI hostage negotiator can;t place him as a mass murder. 

"Paddock doesn’t seem like a typical mass murderer," Clint Van Zandt, a former supervisor in the bureau’s behavioural science unit told AP. Paddock is much older than the typical shooter and was not known to be suffering from a mental illness.

“My challenge is, I don’t see any of the classic indicators, so far, that would suggest, ’OK, he’s on the road either to suicide or homicide or both,” Van Zandt said.

Read | Las Vegas: Know more about Stephen Paddock, the man behind music festival massacre

Nevertheless, his actions suggest that he had planned the attacks for at least a period of days.

“He knew what he wanted to do. He knew how he was going to do it, and it doesn’t seem like he had any kind of escape plan at all.”

However, the past check did reveal that his father was a convicted bank robber, who tried to kill his investigators and was prone to enjoy the public attention. He was diagnosed as a psychopath at the time. 

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First Published : 03 Oct 2017, 07:16:57 AM

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