Las Vegas massacre probe turns to gunman’s girlfriend ahead of Trump visit

The quest by police to comprehend why a retire shot 58 people to death in Las Vegas has turned to the gunman’s girlfriend, who has flown back to the United States from the Philippines facing investigators’ questions about what she knew of his motives. US President Donald Trump left for Las Vegas on Wednesday to visit a city shaken by the deadliest shooting, a trip that will test his ability to console a shocked nation. Stephen Paddock, who killed himself moments before police stormed the hotel suite he had transformed into a sniper’s nest on Sunday night, left no clear clues as to his reasons for staging the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history. But law enforcement authorities were hoping to obtain some answers from the woman identified as Paddock’s live-in companion, Marilou Danley, who Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo called a “person of interest” in the investigation. Danley boarded a Philippine Airlines passenger jet in Manila, where she had travelled to before the shooting rampage, for a non-stop flight to Los Angeles International Airport, landing there as scheduled on Tuesday night. A police official in Manila, the Philippines capital, and a law enforcement official in the United States, both speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Danley was being met by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in Los Angeles. Investigators were examining a $100,000 wire transfer Paddock sent to an account in the Philippines that “appears to have been intended” for Danley, a senior US homeland security official said on Tuesday. Danley’s return to the United States is the latest development in a case which has baffled investigators for its lack of any apparent motive by the killer. It comes ahead of a condolence visit by President Donald Trump to Las Vegas on Wednesday. Danley arrived in Manila on September 15, more than two weeks before the mass shooting in Las Vegas, then flew to Hong Kong on September 22 and returned in Manila on September 25. She was there until she flew to Los Angeles on Tuesday night, according to a Philippines immigration official. A Philippine police source said authorities in Manila were told that Paddock used identification belonging to Danley, who has an Australian passport, when checking into the Mandalay Bay hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.