After a 16-month investigation, the FBI says it did not find a clear motive behind the Las Vegas shooting that left 58 people dead and hundreds others injured in 2017.
The bureau released its report Tuesday and said that its investigation into Stephen Paddock's attack did not find a "single or clear motivating factor," The Associated Press reports. While the shooter wanted to inflict "the maximum amount of damage," the FBI said he was not "directed, inspired, nor enabled by ideologically-motivated persons or groups."
However, the FBI did say that an "important aspect of the attack was Paddock's desire to die by suicide" and that he wanted to "attain a certain degree of infamy via a mass casualty attack," possibly being influenced by his father, who was a bank robber.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Because Paddock didn't leave a manifesto or a suicide note, the agent in charge of the investigation told AP that he "didn't want people to know" more about what motivated him and that this report "comes as close to understanding the why as we're ever going to get." This, the report says, is consistent with the shooter's character. "Throughout his life, Paddock went to great lengths to keep his thoughts private, and that extended to his final thinking about this mass murder," the report says. Read more at The Associated Press.
-
Navy jet, helicopter crash half-hour apart off carrierSpeed Read A US Navy helicopter and a fighter jet both crashed in the same half-hour during separate operations
-
Hurricane Melissa slams Jamaica as Category 5 stormSpeed Read The year’s most powerful storm is also expected to be the strongest ever recorded in Jamaica
-
Protesters fight to topple one of Africa’s longstanding authoritarian nationsIn the Spotlight Cameroon’s president has been in office 1982
-
France makes first arrests in Louvre jewels heistSpeed Read Two suspects were arrested in connection with the daytime theft of royal jewels from the museum
-
Trump pardons crypto titan who enriched familySpeed Read Binance founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to enabling money laundering while CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange
-
Thieves nab French crown jewels from LouvreSpeed Read A gang of thieves stole 19th century royal jewels from the Paris museum’s Galerie d’Apollon
-
Arsonist who attacked Shapiro gets 25-50 yearsSpeed Read Cody Balmer broke into the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion and tried to burn it down
-
Man charged over LA’s deadly Palisades Firespeed read 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht has been arrested in connection with the fire that killed 12 people
-
4 dead in shooting, arson attack in Michigan churchSpeed Read A gunman drove a pickup truck into a Mormon church where he shot at congregants and then set the building on fire
-
2 kids killed in shooting at Catholic school massSpeed Read 17 others were wounded during a morning mass at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis
-
Australian woman found guilty of mushroom murdersspeed read Erin Patterson murdered three of her ex-husband's relatives by serving them toxic death cap mushrooms
