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Las Vegas gunman's girlfriend returns to US for questioning

Published:Wednesday | October 4, 2017 | 12:00 AM
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AP
This undated photo provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department shows Marilou Danley, girlfriend of the active shooter in Sunday's, incident in which 59 persons were killed.
AP
Kris Delarosby, right, and Colleen Anderson, left, hold Charleen Jochim, centre, as they walk towards a hospital in search of information on a missing friend, Steven Berger of Minnesota, Tuesday, in Las Vegas. The parents of Berger, who had been missing after the mass shooting in Las Vegas, say they were notified on Tuesday afternoon that he had been killed in the attack.
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LAS VEGAS (AP):

The Las Vegas gunman's girlfriend returned to the US overnight after a weeklong trip abroad and was met by investigators seeking to question her for clues to what drove Stephen Paddock to slaughter 59 people from his high-rise hotel suite.

More than two days after the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, the question of why someone with no known record of violence or crime would open fire on a country music festival was unanswered.

Paddock's girlfriend, Marilou Danley, 62, who was in the Philippines at the time of the Sunday night bloodbath, was met by FBI agents at the Los Angeles airport late Tuesday, according to a law enforcement official who wasn't authorised to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Sheriff Joseph Lombardo, who has called Danley a "person of interest" in the attack, said on Tuesday that "we anticipate some information from her shortly" and that he is "absolutely" confident authorities will find out what set off Paddock.

The 64-year-old high-stakes gambler and retired accountant from Mesquite, Nevada, killed himself as police closed in on his 32nd-floor room at the Mandalay Bay hotel casino.

Danley's sisters in Australia said in a TV interview there that they believe she couldn't have known about Paddock's murderous plans, and that he must have sent her away so she wouldn't interfere.

The sisters whose faces were obscured and their names withheld said Danley is "a good person" who would have stopped Paddock had she been there.

"She probably was even (more) shocked than us because she is more closer to him than us," said one of the sisters, who live near Brisbane.

Whatever Paddock's motive, authorities said he planned the attack methodically, not only stockpiling nearly two dozen guns in his hotel room but setting up cameras in the peephole and on a service cart outside his door, apparently to watch for police coming for him.

During the rampage, a hotel security guard who approached the room was shot through the door and wounded in the leg.