Stephen Paddock was a 64-year-old divorcee, an atheist, an international traveler and an avid cruiser, a real estate investor, a seasoned video poker gambler (winning lots of money by applying algorithms to gambling machines), an amateur pilot (owning two small planes), a wealthy property manager, and an accountant (with a net worth > $2 million).
He once lived at this really nice Dell Webb community called "Sun City Mesquite" located in Mesquite, Nevada. He resided in this really nice house (pictured below). Dell Webb communities are popular retirement communities popping up all over the United States. The concept is genius. They're geared for residents 55 and older who are empty nesters, have down-sized to a maintenance-free, zero-lot neighborhood which provides very quiet, peaceful, and low-key lifestyle/community. No mowing, home comes with warranty. You'll often times find residents on golf carts en-route to the clubhouse for fitness, dinner, a game of Bridge, movie night or meeting neighbors at the tennis courts for a heated game of pickle ball. Neighbors of this Sun City community described Paddock as extremely low profile, residing unostentatiously with his girlfriend.
 |
| His Mesquite Dell Webb home sold for $425,000 and the proceeds were directed to his victims... |
 |
| House of horrors... |
I was extremely shocked to learn that Stephen Paddock was a resident of a Dell Webb Community! What Stephen Paddock will be remembered for is quite the opposite of quiet, peaceful, and low key. He would later fire over a thousand rounds from his 32nd floor room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino on an innocent crowd of concert goers at the "Route 91 Harvest Music Fest" on the Las Vegas Strip.
Tragically, sixty people were slain and 411 were wounded before Paddock took his own life with a shotgun. Police found hand-written notes where Paddock had been calculating the wind, trajectory and distance from the windows he would later shatter with a hammer to begin his shooting spree. He had meticulously planned this attack. The police found 23 rifles and one handgun in his adjoining rooms.
 |
| Excuse the dirty windshield. A shot of Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino from the highway... |
On October 1, 2017, the third and final night of the festival + while Jason Aldean was performing a final act, the shooting began. It lasted from 10 p.m. and ended at 10:15 p.m. What was only 15 minutes would seem like an eternity to those in attendance. The concert goers, originally mistaking the firing for fireworks, were sitting ducks as a security gate prohibited them from exiting the lot.
In the aftermath, survivors of the victims sued the Mandalay Bay Hotel (part of MGM Resorts International -- with very "deep pockets") claiming negligence by the hotel staff for allowing Paddock to basically stock pile weapons over the course of his stay. They reached a settlement for $800 MILLION. This shocked me, because, just from a legal prospective, I felt that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy concerning the contents of your bags as a patron to a hotel/motel/resort. I didn't feel that the hotel was negligent by respecting that privacy.
While Paddock's motive (if any), to this day, remains a mystery to everyone, this shooting gained the dubious title as the deadliest mass shootings by a lone gunman in modern US history (exceeding the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting which killed 49 people). From details in Paddock's girlfriend's testimony and later investigations, it was discovered that Paddock had been planning a mass shooting for a while (considering several different venues in other states before deciding on the Las Vegas Strip). However, his girlfriend just felt like his stockpiling of weapons was a hobby.
 |
| Stephen Paddock |
The US Justice Department, in response to this shooting, banned bump stocks. If you're unfamiliar with gun terminology, bump stocks allow rapid succession of shots similar to automatic weapons. Gun laws remain an extremely contested topic, and many people (myself included) felt that restricted gun laws won't prevent a lunatic like Paddock. Rather, we argue gun laws restrict the freedoms of the law abiding citizens via the Constitution of the United States of America.
Then after a 10 month "investigation" and an array of fake news and disproven conspiracy theories, the Mandalay Bay shooting was just hushed about. The victims?...completely forgotten. Why is that? Seems odd that we wouldn't put a little more digging into the deadliest shooting by an individual in the USA. Am I wrong?
Isn’t it strange that the victims (61 murdered and 141 badly injured) of this massacre were white, Christian conservatives and after 10 months the investigation just died...but eight victims in Charleston are still incessantly discussed and got all our statues dedicated or taken down in the south + caused a massive cultural revolution. Why is that? Just something to think about...
Anyways, some random things I found about Paddock which were never shared by the main stream media:
Paddock was prescribed the anti-anxiety drug, Valium. Months leading up to the shooting, he often smelled of alcohol and appeared despondent. The known side effects of Valium are amplified by alcohol. He also had OCD (obsessed with cleanliness) and bipolar disorder. He refused anti-depressant medication.
There were a number of laptops in his Mandalay Bay Hotel room. Computer forensics would later discover hundreds of images of child pornography on his laptops.
Just two weeks before the shooting, Paddock surprised his girlfriend with an airline ticket to the Philippines, her home country. He also gifted her $100,000 to purchase a home there.
His father, Benjamin Paddock was a bank robber. When Paddock was just 7 years old (1960), his father was arrested. Having escaped from prison in 1969, he appeared on the FBI's Most Wanted List. Just a mildly interesting piece of information, don't you think?
Paddock worked for the US Postal Service for 3 years. For the following 6 years he worked as an agent for the IRS. For a year he worked as a auditor for a Defense Contract Audit Agency, and he also worked as an internal auditor for a company that would later merge to become Lockheed Martin (a mega defense contractor for the US military). Anyone else finding this wildly or even mildly interesting? Basically, he was a career government employee who underwent rigorous background checks and nothing, no red flags!
His only prior encounter with law enforcement included one minor traffic violation which he settled in court. In 2012 he sued the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas alleging he slipped on a hazard and injured himself. The lawsuit was dismissed.
Some other things I found really strange:
On his 2020 album entitled, Music to Be Murdered By, Eminem's lyrics likened his pre-performance jitters to how Paddock must have felt right before opening fire on the crowd. Weeiiirrrd analogy, Eminem...just weird.
Also, a year later, another unhinged lunatic would shoot up a bar in California killing 13 people, one of which was a survivor of the Mandalay Bay Shooting. In fact, roughly 60 survivors from the Mandalay Bay shooting were at that bar in California that day. That's so crazy to be present at two mass shootings within a year.
No doubt this event in recent US history was tragic. It raises so many questions. Does someone have to have a motive to kill? Did Paddock have a motive when he opened fire on a country music festival? By the way, they found materials for explosives in his car. So, had Paddock not had access to purchase weapons/guns, would he have used homemade bombs or explosives? In other words, if there's a will, isn't there always a way? Do strict gun laws prevent shootings (in Chicago, for example? I think they call the city Chi-raq...although Memphis has a higher murder rate than Chicago per capital).
Here is a link to the victims who left us way too soon:
https://www.findagrave.com/virtual-cemetery/841417?page=3#sr-185061894
 |
| Bella is the best road trip co-captain. She gives tons of hugs... |
No comments:
Post a Comment