Las Vegas - The quest by police to
comprehend why a retiree shot 58 people to death in Las Vegas
has turned to the gunman's girlfriend, who has flown back to the
United States from the Philippines facing investigators'
questions about what she knew of his motives.
Stephen Paddock, who killed himself moments before police
stormed the hotel suite he had transformed into a sniper's nest
on Sunday night, left no clear clues as to his reasons for
staging the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
But law enforcement authorities were hoping to obtain some
answers from the woman identified as Paddock's live-in
companion, Marilou Danley, who Clark County Sheriff Joseph
Lombardo called a "person of interest" in the investigation.
Danley boarded a Philippine Airlines passenger jet in
Manila, where she had traveled to before the shooting rampage,
for a non-stop flight to Los Angeles International Airport,
landing there as scheduled on Tuesday night.
A police official in Manila, the Philippines capital, and a
law enforcement official in the United States, both speaking on
condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Danley was being met
by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in Los Angeles.
The U.S. source said Danley was not under arrest but that
the FBI hoped she would consent to be interviewed voluntarily.
Investigators were examining a $100 000 (about R1.3 million) wire transfer
Paddock sent to an account in the Philippines that "appears to
have been intended" for Danley, a senior U.S. homeland security
official told Reuters on Tuesday.
The official, who has been briefed regularly on the probe
but spoke on condition of anonymity, said the working assumption
of investigators was that the money was intended as a form of
life insurance payment for Danley.
Danley's return to the United States is the latest
development in a case which has baffled investigators for its
lack of any apparent motive by the killer. It comes ahead of a
condolence visit by President Donald Trump to Las Vegas on
Wednesday.
Trump, who strongly supported gun rights during his bid for
the White House, now confronts for the first time as president
the tragic aftermath of deadly firearms violence that has
routinely claimed hundreds of lives in recent years.
On Tuesday, he referred to Paddock as "a sick man, a
demented man," and in response to renewed calls for tougher gun
control measures, said, "we'll be talking about gun laws as time
goes by."
MONEY TRAIL TO PHILIPPINES
In Las Vegas, police acknowledged being stymied in their
initial attempts to determine what drove Paddock, 64, to
assemble an arsenal of high-powered weapons in a 32nd-floor
hotel suite and unleash a barrage of gunfire onto an crowded
outdoor concert below.
Investigators hope Danley may shed some additional light on
the carnage, carried out by an individual with no criminal
record, no known history of mental illness and no outward signs
of social disaffection, political discontent or extremist
ideology.
Danley, an Australian citizen reported to have been born in
the Philippines, had been sharing Paddock's condo at a
retirement community in Mesquite, Nevada, about 90 miles (145
km) northeast of Las Vegas, according to police and public
records.
The homeland security official said U.S. authorities were
eager to question Danley, who described herself on social media
websites as a "casino professional," mother and grandmother,
about whether Paddock encouraged her to leave the United States
before he went on his rampage.
"He sent her away so that he can plan what he is planning
without interruptions, in that sense I thank him for sparing my
sister's life, but that won't be to compensate the 59 people's
lives," two of her sisters told Australia’s Seven Network
television.
Danley's sisters, whose full identities were shielded by the
television station, said that Paddock bought her a ticket to the
Philippines.
“No-one can put the puzzles together. No-one except Marilou,
because Steve is not here to talk anymore. Only Marilou can
maybe help," they said.
Danley arrived in Manila on Sept. 15, more than two weeks
before the mass shooting in Las Vegas, then flew to Hong Kong on
September 22 and returned in Manila on September 25. She was there until
she flew to Los Angeles on Tuesday night, according to a
Philippines immigration official.
A Philippine police source said authorities in Manila were
told that Paddock used identification belonging to Danley, who
has an Australian passport, when checking into the Mandalay Bay
hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.
Both the Philippines immigration official and police source
spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The U.S. official said investigators had also uncovered
evidence that Paddock may have rehearsed his plans at other
venues before ultimately carrying out his attack on the Route 91
Harvest country music festival near the Mandalay Bay hotel.
ARSENAL RECOVERED
Fresh details about the massacre Paddock's weaponry emerged
on Tuesday.
Police said Paddock strafed the concert crowd with bullets
for nine to 11 minutes before taking his own life, and had set
up cameras inside and outside his hotel suite so he could see
police as they closed in on his location.
A total of 47 firearms were recovered from three locations
searched by investigators - Paddock's hotel suite, his home in
Mesquite, and another property associated with him in Reno,
Nevada, according to Jill Snyder, special agent for the U.S.
Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).
Snyder said 12 of the guns found in the hotel room were
fitted with so-called bump-stock devices that allow the guns to
be fired virtually as automatic weapons. The devices are legal
under U.S. law, even though fully automatic weapons are for the
most part banned.
The rifles, shotguns and pistols were purchased in four
states - Nevada, Utah, California and Texas - Snyder told
reporters at an evening news conference.
A search of Paddock's car turned up a supply of ammonium
nitrate, a fertiliser that can be formed into explosives and was
used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of a federal office
building that killed 168 people, Lombardo said earlier.
Police also confirmed that photos widely published online
showing the gunman's body, his hands in gloves, lying on the
floor beside two firearms and spent shell casings, were
authentic crime-scene images obtained by media outlets. An
internal investigation was under way to determine how they were
leaked.
Video footage of the shooting spree on Sunday night caught
by those on the ground showed throngs of people screaming in
horror, some crouching in the open, hemmed in by fellow
concert-goers, and others running for cover as extended bursts
of gunfire rained onto the crowd of some 20 000.
Police had put the death toll at 59 earlier on Tuesday, not
including the gunman. However, the coroner's office revised the
confirmed tally to 58 dead, plus Paddock, on Tuesday night.
More than 500 people were injured, some trampled in the
pandemonium. At least 20 of the survivors admitted to one of
several hospitals in the area, University Medical Center,
remained in critical condition on Tuesday, doctors said.
The union representing firefighters disclosed that a dozen
off-duty firefighters who were attending the music festival were
shot while trying to render aid to other spectators, two of them
while performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on victims.
"This is a true feat of heroism on their part," said Ray
Rahne of the International Association of Fire Fighters.
The gunman's brother, Eric Paddock, said his family did not
plan to hold a funeral for his brother, who was not religious,
in part because it could attract unwanted attention. He
previously described his brother as a financially well-off
enthusiast of video poker and cruises.
The death toll of Sunday's shooting far surpassed the
massacre of 26 young children and educators in Newtown,
Connecticut, in 2012, and the slaying of 49 people at a gay
nightclub in Orlando last year.
The latter attack was previously the deadliest mass shooting
in modern U.S. history.