Las Vegas gunman’s girlfriend ‘knew nothing about planned violence’
Las Vegas gunman’s girlfriend ‘knew nothing about planned violence’:- The girlfriend of the Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock had no idea he was planning violence, according to her lawyer.
Marilou Danley has been questioned by the FBI after being met by investigators on her return to the US from the Philippines.
Her lawyer Matthew Lombard spoke in Los Angeles where she had arrived after flying from the far east where she had been visiting family.
While she was there, Paddock shot dead 58 people at a country music festival and injured hundreds more when he fired upon a crowd from a hotel window in the Nevada city.
It emerged on Wednesday that Paddock may have been intending to target a different festival a week earlier and also had a greater quantity of ammunition than first thought.
Ms Danley issued a statement after reports emerged that her boyfriend had wired $100,000 to the Philippines while she was abroad.
She said she was initially pleased when he wired her the cash to buy a house for her family, but later feared it was a way to break up with her.
“It never occurred to me in any way whatsoever that he was planning violence against anyone,” Ms Danley said in the statement read by Mr Lombard.
“He never said anything to me or took any action that I was aware of that I understood in any way to be a warning that something horrible like this was going to happen.”
She said she knew him “as a kind, caring, quiet man”.
Ms Danley, who is classed as a “person of interest”, spoke with the FBI for several hours as the investigators’ struggled to establish a motive for Paddock.
She lived with the former accountant at his retirement community home in Mesquite, Nevada – where officials searching the property have found a number of weapons.
She was born in the Philippines, and is an Australian citizen.
Footage reportedly showed the 62-year-old woman being taken in a wheelchair at LAX while flanked by uniformed police officers.
Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, said he was “absolutely” confident authorities would find out what was behind the worst mass shooting in modern US history.
Ms Danley’s sisters have said they believe she was “sent away” so she could not interfere with her boyfriend’s plan to open fire on thousands of people in the massacre.
One said: “I know that she doesn’t know anything as well like us. She was sent away. She was away so that she will not be there to interfere with what he’s planning.”
Speaking to Seven News in Australia, the women said they were in complete shock to discover their sister had arrived in the Philippines two weeks ago.
One of them said Ms Danley was “a good person” who would have stopped Paddock if she had been there. They also claimed Ms Danley had been sent $127,000 (£95,000).
Las Vegas Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told reporters Paddock rented a room through Airbnb in The Ogden building, in the downtown area of Las Vegas, which overlooked the site of a music festival that was taking place at the same time, between 22 and 24 September.
The Life is Beautiful festival featured Muse, Gorillaz, The XX, Lorde and Chance the Rapper.
It also emerged that the gunman had 1,600 rounds of ammunition and 50lbs of the explosive Tannerite in his car but it was not known what they were to be used for.
A clarified timeline was also provided, with police saying the shooting began at 10.05pm and finished 10 minutes later, but it was not until 11.20pm when the first police entered his room.
At some point he shot 200 rounds into the hallway when a security guard approached, leaving him with an injured leg.
Source:-Â http://news.sky.com/story/las-vegas-gunmans-girlfriend-knew-nothing-about-planned-violence-lawyer-11067416
