One Year After Mandalay Bay Shooting, Questions Remain

It was one year ago Monday when Stephen Paddock allegedly showered attendees at a country music concert in Las Vegas with gunfire, killing 58 and injuring more than 400, but questions remain about one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history.

Authorities said that Paddock, with a lethal stash of weapons, fired from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the famed Las Vegas Strip, shooting into the crowd and then killing himself with a pistol as police closed in, the website Talking Points Memo wrote.

The website reported what has eluded law enforcement so far in investigating the crime is a motive – why did the 64-year-old high-limits gambler who was sought after by casinos to play there attack a concert crowd with enough weapons to arm a small militia?

During a preliminary report on the shooting in January, investigators determined that Paddock allegedly acted alone and did not leave a suicide note, according to The Guardian. After conducting several hundred interviews and combing through evidence, authorities found that something changed in the real estate investor months before the shooting, per the newspaper.

His girlfriend Marilou Danley, who was in her home country of the Philippines at the time of the shooting, told authorities that Paddock had started acting “strangely” for several weeks leading up to the incident, The Guardian wrote.

Sheriff Joe Lombardo of Clark County said, according to the newspaper, that even though Danley was identified as a “person of interest,” she did not face any charges.

She told law enforcement that Paddock would look out windows overlooking an area where the concert was eventually held, walking to each frame to see the site from different angles, The Guardian reported, pointing to the preliminary investigation.

Danley said that he became distant, was germophobic, and had strong reactions to smells, per The Guardian.

But when the final criminal report on the shooting was released in August, authorities were no closer to answering “why.”

“The goal of our investigation all along has been to provide the public with the clearest picture possible of the events leading up to” the shooting last year, “as well as motive,” Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said then, according to CNN.

“What we have been able to answer are the questions of who, what, when, where, and how. What we have not been able to answer definitively is the why Stephen Paddock committed this act,” he continued.

Authorities had found that Paddock’s wealth was dwindling as well. Investigators said, according to CNN, that Paddock had $2 million stashed away in 14 different bank accounts in September 2015, but that total had melted to $530,000.