Nevada police have closed the investigation behind Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock; however, his motive behind the shooting, which killed 58 people and injured hundreds of others, remains a mystery.
On the night of October 1, 2017, Paddock opened fire on a crowd of concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest musical festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada. According to reports, the 64-year-old fired over 1,100 rounds in ten minutes from his suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel.
Almost an hour after his 10-minute shooting spree, Paddock was found dead in his hotel room from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Today, the incident remains the deadliest mass shooting committed by an individual in the US, but investigators are still unsure why Paddock did it.
In a statement on Friday (August 3), Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo revealed law enforcement have been unable to determine a motive despite closing the investigation.
He said: “Investigators have lived this event day by day for the past 10 months. Finding answers for the victims has been our investigators’ sole goal to help bring closure for those affected and to move forward from this horrible event.”
“By all accounts, Stephen Paddock was an unremarkable man. His movements leading up to October 1 did not raise any suspicion.”
Lombardo also released the 187-page criminal investigation report into the massacre, revealing that, despite reports that there had been multiple shooters in different locations, Paddock had acted alone.
According to the report, there was no evidence suggesting that anyone had assisted Paddock or evidence that linked him to a terrorist group. The report also revealed that Paddock left no suicide note, hadn’t committed any crimes leading up to the day of the shooting and had obtained his firearms legally.
