Stephen Paddock opened fire at a Las Vegas music festival, killing 58 people. (AP)
The Las Vegas shooter who would spend hours sitting in front of video poker machines – sometimes reportedly wagering more than $10,000 a day – was on a significant losing streak in the years leading up to the Oct. 1 massacre, the city’s sheriff revealed this week.
Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told KLAS on Wednesday that, since September 2015, Stephen Paddock had lost a huge amount of money.
“I think that might have a determining factor on what he determined to do,” Lombardo said.
The sheriff added Paddock was narcissistic, suffered bouts of depression and was very status-driven, based on how he liked to be recognized in the casinos and by his family and friends.
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“I don’t know in the casino environment whether he was considered a big gambler or not. I think in his own mind he believed himself to be,” Lombardo told KLAS. “If you look at the numbers that he did gamble, he was pretty prolific, but he was going in the wrong direction. So I don’t know if that had any effect on what he decided to do.”
The gunman, who killed 58 people in at attack staged from his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, also generated cash from real estate transactions.
"If you look at the numbers that he did gamble, he was pretty prolific, but he was going in the wrong direction."
One of Paddock's brother in the past described him as a “substantial gambler” who treated the activity like “a job.”
"He won cars and $250,000 checks and all this stuff from the hotel,” Eric Paddock told The Associated Press.
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Paddock apparently was wagering more than $10,000 a day in some cases, according to reports.
John Weinreich, a former executive casino host at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa in Reno, Nev., where Paddock used to frequent, said it was “not a lot of smiles and friendliness” when the shooter was staring into the video poker machines.
“There was not a lot of body movement except for his hands,” he told The New York Times in October.
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