Las Vegas shooting probe closes without definitively identifying attacker's motive


Las Vegas police on Friday closed their probe into October's mass shooting without shedding light on attacker Stephen Paddock's motives for killing 58 people and injuring 500 more.
"What we have been able to answer are the questions of who, what, when, where, and how," said Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo. "What we have not been able to definitively answer is the 'why' Stephen Paddock committed this act."
The investigation report notes Paddock's brother has suggested he "conducted the attack because he had done everything in the world he wanted to do and was bored with everything. If so, Paddock would have planned the attack to kill a large amount of people because he would want to be known as having the largest casualty count. Paddock always wanted to be the best and known to everyone."
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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