Stephen Paddock

Stephen Paddock
Paddock in a photo posted to his girlfriend's Facebook page
Born	Stephen Craig Paddock (1953-04-09)April 9, 1953 Clinton, Iowa, U.S.
Died	October 1, 2017(2017-10-01) (aged 64) Paradise, Nevada, U.S.
Cause of death	Suicide by self-inflicted gunshot wound
Occupation	Accountant, real estate investor, gambler
Known for	Perpetrator of the 2017 Las Vegas Strip shooting
Parent(s)	Benjamin Hoskins Paddock
Killings
Victims	58
Date	October 1, 2017

Stephen Craig Paddock (April 9, 1953 – October 1, 2017) was an American mass murderer who committed the 2017 Las Vegas Strip shooting. He fired semi-automatic weapons into a crowd of approximately 22,000 concertgoers at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip on October 1, 2017, killing 58 people.

Paddock lived in Mesquite, Nevada. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound thus ending the shooting attack. The incident surpassed the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting as the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history, with 58 fatalities (excluding Paddock) and 489 injuries.

Paddock was born in Iowa. He grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and Sun Valley, California, as one of four sons of Benjamin Hoskins Paddock. The elder Paddock was a convicted bank robber who escaped prison in 1969 and subsequently had his name added to the FBI's most-wanted list. Stephen was 15 years old at the time. According to his brother, they never really knew their father as he was never with their mother.

Stephen Paddock graduated from John H. Francis Polytechnic High School in 1971, and from California State University, Northridge in 1977, with a degree in business administration.

Paddock worked for the federal government from about 1975 to 1985. He was a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service in 1976–1978. He worked for six years as an Internal Revenue Service agent, until 1984. He was a federal auditor for one year, in 1985, focusing on defense contractors. Towards the end of the 1980s, he worked for three years as an internal auditor for a company that later merged to form Lockheed Martin. Paddock's work career after this period is not clear. However, it is known he lived in the Los Angeles area and owned personal property in areas including Panorama City, Cerritos and North Hollywood, from the 1970s to early 2000s. He owned rental properties around the country, including two run-down apartment buildings in the working-class neighborhood of Hawthorne, California. He owned an apartment complex in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite, which he sold in 2012. Relatives said Paddock was worth at least $2 million.