Stephen Paddock, the man responsible for the worst shooting massacre in modern US history when he opened fire on a music festival in Las Vegas last month, had “lost a significant amount of wealth” according to the Clark County Sheriff who is part of the investigation that is now entering its second month.
Describing Paddock as “status-driven”, Sheriff Joe Lombardo also described the lone wolf shooter as a “narcissist” who was “going through some bouts of depression” in an interview with 8 News Now – offering the authorities first public view of what may been behind Paddock’s killing spree in which 58 innocent concert-goers died and hundreds more were injured before Paddock took his own life.
"Since September 2015, he's lost a significant amount of wealth, and I think that might have been a determining factor on what he was determined to do," Lombardo said of the 64-year old gunman who was known to play video poker for a living and added that "He was going in the wrong direction."
Lombardo explained further:
"This individual was status-driven based on how he liked to be recognized in the casino environment and how he liked to be recognized by his friends and family. So obviously that was starting to decline in the short period of time and that may have had a determining effect on why decided to do what he did."
The motive for Paddock to open fire on the crowd at the Route 91 Harvest music festival from the windows of his 32nd floor room at the Mandalay Bay casino and hotel has been an open question since the massacre took place on October 1st, but Lombardo’s comments give an inkling as to Paddock’s possible mind-set at the time.
The Sheriff also opened up about the timeline of events on the fateful evening, a part of the investigation which has been questioned by many after claims that there was a long and unexplained delay between a security guard being shot outside the gunman’s room and the eventual police assault which pre-empted Paddock’s suicide.
According to Lombardo, Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos had ‘been alerted that a room on the 32nd floor had a door that had been held open for a long period of time’ and discovered that ‘the door to that floor from the stairwell had been barricaded’, radioing in a report at 9:59 p.m. He then took the stairs to the 33rd floor, exited, walked to the elevators and took one back down to the 32nd floor and was shot in the leg as he walked outside Paddock's door.
"So subsequently you have a couple minutes of him going up, going down the elevators and back down the hallway and then he encounters the suspect," Lombardo said. "He receives a wound, he attempts to go through his radio and then he also confirms his communication with dispatch via cellphone."
Lombardo claims:
"We didn't know shots were fired until 10:05 pm - 10:04:55 or something like that. That's when we actually determined - through calls for service, computer-aided dispatch, body-worn cameras, other people's observations through videos in Uber, taxis things like that - we feel pretty comfortable in that the large amounts of firing by the suspect occurred at 10:05 p.m."
After this, says Lombardo, to LVMPD officers ‘began working their way up the stairs as the shooting began’ and shortly afterwards more officers ‘ascended via the elevator bank and came out into the foyer or hallway from the elevator bank there - right around 12 minutes. During that time, the suspect had stopped firing. And so when we don't hear any firing taking place, then it becomes slow and methodical.'
The Sheriff says that by the time they entered Paddock’s room, the gunman had shot himself.
"I honestly believe that he believed the wolf was at the door - being us, LVMPD - and that is when he made the decision to take his life," Lombardo said.
Paddock’s family history has been at the centre of attention since the massacre, his father a known bank robber and one of his brothers recently arrested on child pornography charges.