Stephen Craig Paddock, the Las Vegas gunman who shot dead about 59 people and injured over 500 with nearly hundreds of bullets late on Sunday, October 1, was a multi-millionaire and made most of his money by investing it in real estate, according to his brother.
Eric Paddock said that he was shocked that Stephen, 64, had killed so many people and revealed that his brother had earlier worked as an accountant and was a gambler. Stephen was someone with "no religious affiliation, no political affiliation" and was "not an avid gun guy at all."
While Eric did say that his brother was "not a normal guy" and "played high-stakes video poker," the family never saw him as someone who could have had so many guns and could kill people. "Our condolences to everyone. We just don't understand. It's like I said, an asteroid just fell out of the sky. And we have no reason, rhyme, rationale, excuse. There's just nothing," the Associated Press quoted Eric as saying.
He also said that there was no indication that Stephen was planning something like this and was in Vegas on a cruise. The gunman is also said to have sent his mother a walker as she had trouble walking.
Explaining that the family did not even know that Stephen had guns, Eric said that he would like to know where his brothers managed to get the guns from.
"We're working with the cops since the first thing, trying to you know understand, trying to make it do what we could. There's just nothing. We have nothing to give you. He was just a guy," he added
"I mean he's definitely only himself. There's no affiliations, once again that I know of, there's no affiliations. There's no church, there's no politics, there's no anything."
Eric also said that Stephen didn't have any financial issues and recently even sent him an image of a slot machine where he had won $40,000. He also had a pilot's license and also held a hunting license in Texas.
Meanwhile heavily armed police searched Stephen's home in Mesquite, where he lived with his 62-year-old girlfriend Marilou Danley. She was initially considered a person of interest in the case, but it was later found that she was out of country at the time of the incident and her involvement in it seemed unlikely.
Even though Stephen did not have any criminal record against him, his father, Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, was a notorious bank robber, Eric told The Orlando Sentinel. He was even on the FBI list, which said Benjamin had been "diagnosed as psychopathic" and should be considered "armed and very dangerous."
While the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the attack and said that Stephen had recently converted to Islam, the local police and the FBI have disputed the claim explaining that the connection between Stephen and the terror group isn't clear yet.
