The brother of the Las Vegas gunman said he was an intelligent, wealthy man who took care of the people around him.
“Steve took care of the people he loved; he helped me and my family become wealthy,” Eric Paddock told reporters outside of his home Tuesday. “He’s the reason I was able to retire three years ago.”
In an emotional and sometimes ranting exchange with reporters, he said he was not surprised by news reports that his brother, Stephen Paddock, wired $ 100,000 to the Philippines, though he said he could not confirm the information.
Still, he said wiring that kind of money for his brother would not be a problem, or an odd thing for him to do.
“We’re wealthy people; $ 100,000 isn’t that much money, and I’m sorry if that hurts people,” he said. “I guess everybody thinks that everybody works at Taco Bell or something. Everybody doesn’t work at Taco Bell, there’s people who do this.”
Authorities believe Stephen Paddock’s girlfriend, Marilou Danley, is currently in the Philippines.
“He would have wanted to take care of Marilou,” Eric Paddock said. “As Steve must have been cratering into this hell, he wanted to take care of Marilou.”
Paddock said his brother was a private person, but fun to hang around with for those who knew him, telling reporters of eating “thousands of dollars of sushi” at a Las Vegas hotel where he was a regular visitor.
Despite their time spent together, he said he wouldn’t be surprised if his brother didn’t keep him updated about significant events in his life, such as getting married or where he would be traveling to.
But days after the deadly shooting, Eric Paddock said he still had no insight as to what pushed his brother to open fire on a crowd of concertgoers Sunday night.
Paddock said he woke up crying Tuesday morning and that he would do anything to make the families of the victims feel better if possible.
“If having a funeral for Steve and letting all these people come and spit on his grave would make them feel better in any shape or form,” he said, “I would do whatever is possible.”
—Salvador Hernandez
