Perched in his suite at a high-rise hotel overlooking the Vegas Strip, a 64-year-old retiree with no real criminal history and no known affiliations with terror groups rained bullets down into a crowd at a country music festival Sunday, killing at least 59 people and injuring hundreds more in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.
The attack, at least initially, was as inexplicable as it was horrifying. Law enforcement officials said they could not immediately tell what drove Stephen Paddock to fire at thousands of unsuspecting concertgoers from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino before killing himself.
Authorities said a sweep of law enforcement databases showed Paddock had no known run-ins with police, and — despite the Islamic State’s repeated claims otherwise — investigators also could not find any connections to international terrorist groups. He was the son of a notorious bank robber and his own crime demonstrated some amount of sophisticated planning.
