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The motive behind the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history remained a mystery as police sought to learn more about the apparent "lone wolf" gunman who opened fire on thousands of concertgoers from the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas hotel. At least 59 people were killed and more than 500 others injured in the shooting, which happened during a Sunday night performance by country music star Jason Aldean at the Route 91 Harvest Festival. The gunman hammered out a window at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino and began firing with a cache of weapons. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility, without offering evidence, but Aaron Rouse, the FBI agent in charge in Las Vegas, said investigators saw no connection to international terrorism.
The suspected gunman, Stephen Craig Paddock, a 64-year-old retiree from Mesquite, Nevada, wasn't on law enforcement's radar. Paddock's brother, Eric Paddock, who lives in Florida, says his multimillionaire brother was a big spender at casinos and often received free meals and rooms there. 
Eric Paddock also described his brother as different than other people: "He was a guy who had money. He went on cruises and gambled." 
Stephen Paddock lived in a tidy Nevada retirement community where the amenities include golf, tennis and bocce. He was a wealthy real-estate investor, recently shipped his 90-year-old mother a walker and liked to play high-stakes video poker in Las Vegas. 
Nothing in his background suggests why he would have been on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino with at least 17 guns on Sunday night, raining an unparalleled slaughter upon an outdoor country music festival below. 
The gunman killed himself before police entered the hotel room from where he was firing. 
While Stephen Paddock appeared to have no criminal history, his father Benjamin Hoskins Paddock was a notorious bank robber. 
Benjamin Hoskins Paddock tried to run down an FBI agent with his car in Las Vegas in 1960 and wound up on the agency's most wanted list after escaping from a federal prison in Texas in 1968, when Stephen Paddock was a teen. 
The oldest of four children, Paddock was 7 when his father Benjamin Hoskins Paddock was arrested for the robberies.
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