Following the Unites States’ deadliest mass shooting yet in Las Vegas earlier this week, the dead gunman’s girlfriend has announced that she had no warning of her partner’s plan to commit this act. CNN reports that shooter Stephen Paddock’s girlfriend Marilou Danley released a statement through her attorney on Wednesday, saying that she was “devastated” by the deadly event.
62-year-old Danley was visiting family in the Philippines at the time of the shooting at a Las Vegas country music concert. After returning to the States on Tuesday, she was interrogated by the FBI on Wednesday, but ultimately knew very little helpful information.
“I knew Stephen Paddock as a kind, caring, quiet man,” Danley said in her statement. “I loved him and hoped for a future together with him. 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.”
Marilou Danley’s lawyer reads statement on her behalf claiming Paddock told her he’d found her a cheap ticket to Philippines 2 weeks ago. pic.twitter.com/anAv5p9rIS
— ABC News (@ABC) October 4, 2017
Business Insider says that Paddock was the one to persuade Danley to take a trip to the Philippines. Her statement reports that he bought her a ticket and even wired her money while she was away. “Like all Filipinos abroad, I was excited to go home and see family and friends,” she explained. “While there, he wired me money, which he said was for me to buy a house for me and my family. I was grateful, but honestly I was worried at first that the unexpected trip home and then the money was a way of breaking up with me.”
Danley willingly traveled back to the United States following the incident and has been cooperating with investigation procedures. She had reportedly been traveling throughout Asia since September 15. In an interview with CNN affiliate Seven Network Australia, Danley’s sisters suggested that Paddock purposely sent her away so she would be uninvolved with the shooting.
“She was sent away,” a sister told the network. “She was sent away so that she will be not there to interfere with what he’s planning.”
It’s unclear how Danley and Paddock initially met, but the former’s sisters revealed that they had met Paddock a few times. “[He was] very quiet, not sociable,” one sister said. “He keep to himself. One question, you get your answer directly. That’s it.”