It has been widely reported that searches of the car and one of the homes of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock yielded stores of ammonium nitrate and tannerite, ingredients used in homemade bombs.
It has also been reported that Paddock was a licensed pilot but I haven’t seen anyone provide any details of the airplanes he owned.
A Nexis search reveals that licensed pilot Stephen Craig Paddock, born April 1953, of 1372 Babbling Brook Ct., Mesquite, Nevada 89034, owned two airplanes, both of which were four-seat, fixed wing single engine aircraft. The first, a Bellanca Super Viking model 17-30A, tail number 28082, was registered in 2005. The second, a Cirrus SR20, tail number 5343M, was registered in 2007.
Did Paddock have more plans, possibly involving bombs and airplanes? We may never know but it’s worth looking into.
Now let’s consider motive. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the slaughter, though so far the authorities say there is no connection between the terrorist organization and Paddock.
So let’s aside for the moment the possible link to international Islamic terror networks. Could Paddock have been an angry left-winger lashing out at conservatives and Trump supporters? His family insists he wasn’t interested in politics but a video has surfaced of a # hat-wearing man at a left-wing protest who looks like Paddock. (I’m not yet convinced it’s actually him — the nose doesn’t look like his — but what do I know? Maybe it’s a lighting issue.)
What’s interesting to me is that the man in the video is shown wearing a shirt emblazoned with “NASA” at the event that took place in August in Reno, Nevada.
As Pamela Geller points out, Paddock worked at Lockheed Martin from 1985 to 1988. The company has done contracting work for NASA for decades.
In fact, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration claimed Paddock as one of its own in a 1993 press release highlighted by Geller. “Steve Paddock” of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is identified as a member of the “study team” exploring the possibility of “a return mission to Mars.”
There are so many unanswered questions about Paddock. We can’t count on the mainstream media to bother asking them.
