Vegas massacre: ‘I can’t get into the mind of a psychopath’

People mourn outside the Mandalay Bay Resort during an interfaith memorial service for victims of the Route 91 music festival mass shooting. Picture: Reuters

People mourn outside the Mandalay Bay Resort during an interfaith memorial service for victims of the Route 91 music festival mass shooting. Picture: Reuters

Published Oct 3, 2017

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Police sought clues yesterday to explain why a retiree with a penchant for gambling but no criminal record set up a sniper’s nest in a high-rise Las Vegas hotel and poured gunfire on to a concert below, slaying dozens of people before killing himself.

Vigils were held in honour of those killed during what has been described as the worst attack in the country's recent history.

The Sunday night shooting spree from a 32nd-floor window of the Mandalay Bay Hotel, on the Las Vegas Strip, killed at least 59 people before the gunman turned a weapon on himself. 

More than 500 were injured, some trampled, in the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.

The gunman, identified as Stephen Paddock, 64, left no immediate hint of his motive for the arsenal of high-powered weaponry he amassed, including 34 guns, or the carnage he inflicted on a crowd of 22 000 attending an outdoor country music festival.

A candlelight vigil on the Las Vegas strip following the mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival in Las Vegas on Sunday. Picture: REUTERS

Paddock was not known to have served in the military, or to have suffered from a history of mental illness or to have registered any inkling of social disaffection, political discontent or radical views on social media.

US officials also discounted a claim of responsibility by the militant Islamic State group.

“We have determined to this point no connection with an international terrorist group,” Aaron Rouse, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation field office in Las Vegas, told reporters on Monday.

Police said they believed Paddock acted alone but were at a loss to explain what might have precipitated it.

“We have no idea what his belief system was,” Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters. “I can’t get into the mind of a psychopath.”

Although police said they had no other suspects, Lombardo said investigators wanted to talk with Paddock’s girlfriend and live-in companion, Marilou Danley.

Lombardo also said detectives were “aware of other individuals” who were involved in the sale of weapons Paddock acquired.

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