Las Vegas police and federal agents are beginning to piece together information about 64-year-old Stephen Craig Paddock, the suspected gunman behind the mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival Sunday night.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said Paddock, a white male from Mesquite, Nev., opened fire on a crowd of more than 22,000 people from his hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel at 10:08 p.m. Sunday.
SWAT officers responding breached the hotel room and found the suspect dead, police said.
Earlier media reports stated police found a cache of weapons in Paddock’s hotel room and killed the suspect upon entry.
Las Vegas police announced around 4:30 a.m. local time they found Paddock deceased from a self-inflicted wound.
“We’ve located numerous firearms within the room that he occupied,” Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters at a press conference Monday morning.
Police believe Paddock was the only shooter, and carried out the shooting from the room. Officials were investigating the incident, but have not called it a terror attack.
“We have no idea what his belief system was,” Lombardo added. “Right now, we believe he was the sole aggressor and the scene is static.”
The Daily Mirror published a photo Monday of the alleged suspect.
First picture of gunman Stephen Paddock who killed at least 50 people by opening fire on Las Vegas crowdshttps://t.co/T8NcyVJ1EF pic.twitter.com/9lrzhKYSa9
— Daily Mirror (@DailyMirror) October 2, 2017
Paddock “was known to local authorities,” but Lombardo did not provide details beyond that. His criminal history, vocation, and motive remain unknown.
The suspect owned two planes and had last filed for a pilot’s license in Texas in 2010, NBC’s “Today” show reported.
He worked for Lockheed Martin, the defense company, for three years in the 1980s.
“Stephen Paddock worked for a predecessor company of Lockheed Martin from 1985 until 1988. We’re cooperating with authorities to answer questions they may have about Mr. Paddock and his time with the company,” the company said in a statement.
Police released a photo of a woman, Marilou Danley, as a person of interest in the incident.
By 3:30 a.m. PST Monday, police said they were “confident, but not 100 percent sure” they had located Danley, who they believed resided with Paddock at a retirement community in Mesquite, approximately 80 miles north of Las Vegas.