Stephen Paddock

Stephen Craig Paddock (April 9, 1953 – October 1, 2017) was an American mass murderer who perpetrated the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. Paddock opened fire into a crowd of about 22,000 concertgoers attending a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip, killing 60 people and injuring approximately 867 (at least 413 of whom were wounded by gunfire). Paddock killed himself in his hotel room following the shooting. The incident is the deadliest mass shooting by a lone shooter in United States history. Paddock's motive remains officially undetermined, and the possible factors are the subject of speculation.

Paddock was a real-estate investor, property manager, accountant, private pilot and video poker gambler who lived in Mesquite, Nevada.

Paddock was born on April 9, 1953, in Clinton, Iowa, where his family lived at the time. He was the oldest of four sons of Benjamin Paddock and Dolores Hudson. Shortly after his birth, his family relocated to Tucson, Arizona. Benjamin was a bank robber who was arrested in Arizona in 1960 when Stephen was seven years old. Benjamin was later convicted and escaped prison in 1969, subsequently appearing on the FBI's most-wanted list.

According to Stephen's brother Eric, "he (Benjamin Paddock) was never with my mom" and "we didn't grow up under his influence." After Benjamin was arrested, their mother told the children that their father had died in a car accident and kept his status as a bank robber a secret from the family. Dolores proceeded to move her sons to the Sun Valley neighborhood of Los Angeles, where Stephen spent his remaining childhood and adolescence in a low-income household. Dolores worked as a secretary to support the family. According to one of Paddock's ex-wives in a police interview, he had spoken about how growing up with a single mother and the family's financial instability caused him to prioritize being self-reliant and self-sustaining.

Another one of Stephen's brothers, Patrick Paddock II said that he and his brothers all grew up with anger, but he said he thought Stephen seemed the least affected. "My brother was the most boring one in the family," Patrick said of Stephen. "He was the least violent one." Former high school classmates describe the younger Paddock as a "math genius" and "quiet and withdrawn."

Paddock attended Richard E. Byrd Middle School, Sun Valley High School, and John H. Francis Polytechnic High School, where he graduated in 1971. He went on to graduate from California State University, Northridge in 1977, with a degree in business administration.

Paddock worked as a postal worker from 1975 to 1978. After that, he worked for the Internal Revenue Service until 1984. In 1985, he worked as an auditor for the Defense Contract Audit Agency. Toward the end of the 1980s Paddock worked for three years as an internal auditor for a company that later merged into Lockheed Martin. He was known to have run a real-estate business with his brother Eric.

Paddock lived in the Greater Los Angeles Area and owned real estate in Panorama City, Cerritos, and North Hollywood from the 1970s to early 2000s. He also owned two apartment buildings in Hawthorne, California. In addition, he owned an apartment complex in Mesquite, Texas, which he sold in 2012.