Brother of Las Vegas shooter detained in Los Angeles

Representation image (File Photo)


Bruce Paddock, the brother of Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock, was detained on Wednesday due to suspected connection to child pornography, local media cited law enforcement source as saying.

NBC news channel reported that the 58-year-old suspect was detained at an assisted-living facility, where he was awaiting surgery for spinal stenosis.

A felony complaint said he could face 19 counts of sexual exploitation of a child and one count of possession of child pornography as he had more than 600 explicit images of minors in 2014 and also swapped pornography, Xinhua news agency reported.

Los Angeles Police Department Officer Mike Lopez confirmed to local KTLA news channel that a child pornography investigation took place in the morning.

However, he did not confirm either Bruce Paddock was the subject of the investigation or a man showed in video clips posted online Wednesday morning, who was in a wheelchair being put by authorities into a police van, was Bruce Paddock.

Sixty-four-year-old Stephen Paddock rained down about 1,600 rounds of ammo from the 32th-floor suite of Mandalay Bay hotel into a crowd of 22,000 concertgoers on October 1.

The incident became the largest mass shooting in US modern history, leaving 58 dead and wounding more than 500.

After the bloody massacre, Bruce Paddock took many media interviews, saying he had not been in touch with his brother Stephen for 10 years and had no idea why the murder would have done in the tragedy.

Bruce Paddock also revealed that their father was a bank robber who once made the FBI’s most-wanted list and was judged by authorities to be “psychopathic” with “suicidal tendencies.”

NBC reported earlier Paddock went to the coroner’s office in Nevada to see if he could claim Stephen Paddock’s remains.