Serge F. Kovaleski

In the aftermath of the 2017 shooting, loved ones of the 58 people who lost their lives in the rampage faced a difficult choice over what to do with the 50 guns and accessories that were owned by the gunman, Stephen Paddock. They could either sell the weapons to raise money or have the guns destroyed in a symbolic renunciation of violence.

Now the families don’t have to worry about making that decision — the donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, has stepped in to cover the funds. His only condition is that the guns are destroyed.

The collection of firearms and equipment was valued at $62,340 in a recent inventory of Paddock’s nearly $1.4 million estate by a court-appointed special administrator. As Paddock died without a will, his mother, under Nevada law, became the heir to his assets, which she agreed to give to the families of the dead victims last March.

After reading a New York Times article about the families’ gun dilemma that was published this month, the California businessman decided to write a check to the families for $62,500. He contacted a reporter at The Times so he could get in touch with the lawyer for the special administrator of the estate.

“It was tugging at my heart strings, and it seemed like a horrific situation for the families to deal with this choice,” he said in an interview. “I wanted to alleviate some of the pain or at least not allow it to get worse.”

The executive said he wants the donation to be anonymous because the focus should be on the families.

“No credit in the face of pain,” he said. “This was about heartbreak and wanting to help.”

He said he made the donation conditional on the destruction of the firearms — which range from pistols to high-powered long arms — to ensure they do not end up back in circulation.

“I think the families would feel better if the weapons are gone,” he said.

Alice Denton, the lawyer for the special administrator of the estate, said the FBI, which is in possession of the firearms, had given a verbal commitment it would destroy the weapons if it received a court order to do so. She said she would seek such an order next month from the Las Vegas judge overseeing the estate case. In the meantime, no action to destroy the guns would be taken.

A spokeswoman for the FBI’s Las Vegas field office said the bureau was unable to comment.

The executive — who said he favors stronger gun control but does not consider himself “an anti-gun activist” — said if it turns out that the FBI will not destroy the firearms, he would try to find another way to have it done.

Denton said she received the check last week and was delighted about the donor’s generosity.

“We are so grateful,” she said. “It shows the compassion that total strangers can have for victims of horrendous crimes, and that, in the face of such evil, there are good people.”

Mynda Smith, whose sister was killed in the attack, said the donor’s gesture and his desire to see the guns destroyed would help relatives like her deal with their sorrow.

“His desire to alleviate any more emotional pain for the families of the 58, and all survivors really, is what makes it a beautiful thing,” Smith said. “Closing this door in this way is the perfect gift for us.”

Denton said the check has been deposited in her trust account and would be transferred to the estate once the guns are destroyed.

Nearly half the guns in question — 23 rifles and a revolver — were found in the gunman’s upper-floor room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, according to the estate inventory.

It was from that perch at the hotel that he opened fire on an outdoor country music festival. Not only were dozens of people slaughtered, hundreds of others were injured in the worst mass shooting in modern American history.

The rest of the gunman’s firearms were in his two Nevada homes. At his house in Mesquite, seven rifles, seven shotguns and five handguns were collected. The estate recently sold that property to an Oregon couple for $425,000.

And two shotguns and five handguns were found at the gunman’s Reno home, which is still listed on the market for $374,900.

Lawyers for some of the victims have said that distributing the money to only the loved ones of the dead meant it could have a far greater impact on their lives than if the large number of people hurt in the attack were also beneficiaries.

If the gunman’s estate were to be divided up equally, each of the 58 families would receive about $24,000 — with the firearms accounting for close to $1,100 per family. The estate also includes an investment property worth a little more than $90,000 and bank and brokerage accounts totaling $455,758.

One family, who intends to sue the manufacturers of the guns used in the shooting, would like to see those weapons kept intact rather than destroyed.

Through a lawyer, the family of Carrie Parsons, who was killed in the attack, has reached out to Denton.

“What we are saying is ‘Please don’t destroy these, they are evidence,” said one of the family’s lawyers, Rick Friedman, who added that he had not yet been able to identify those firearms.

“Destroying guns he did not use, I have no problem with,” Friedman said.

The anonymous executive said he would not want to stand in the way of a legal action like this.

“If there is a delay in destroying some of the guns for legal reasons, I am OK with that,” he said. “I just don’t want them back on the streets.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/us/las-vegas-shooting-guns-donation.html" id="a2e97015-219b-3509-a445-b4ed753a1d5f">The New York Times</a>.

Anonymous Donor Gives $62,000 to Destroy Las Vegas Gunman's Weapons

A San Francisco software executive has donated more than $62,000 to try to ensure that the cache of firearms that was owned by the gunman in the Las Vegas massacre will be destroyed.

All told, the gunman, Stephen Paddock, owned 50 guns, from pistols to high-powered long arms, and almost 40 firearm components including scopes, a red dot sight, bi-pods and rifle cases. A special administrator appointed by a state court judge to determine the value of Paddock’s estate said in a recent report that the guns and equipment were worth about $62,340.

Now, the main lawyer involved in passing on Paddock’s nearly $1.4 million estate to the families of the 58 people he slaughtered at an outdoor country music festival is facing a quandary. Should the firearms be sold to raise as much money as possible for the bereaved, or would it be more appropriate to destroy the guns in an emblematic rejection of the kind of violence that Paddock carried out?

“The money that would come from selling the guns is not a huge amount, but it would help to make a difference in people’s lives,” said Alice Denton, the lawyer for the special administrator in the estate case.

On the other hand, Denton added, “Destroying the guns would send more of a symbolic message to the world that weapons like these should not be sold at any price if death or harm to innocent people cannot be prevented.”

She said the estate would solicit feedback from the families of those killed and review applicable laws before a decision would be made on how to proceed. In the meantime, the guns and accessories are in the possession of the FBI.

In an email message, a spokeswoman for the bureau’s Las Vegas field office, Sandra Breault, declined to comment on whether the FBI would return some or all of the weapons to the estate. “This part of the investigation is still ongoing,” she wrote.

Paddock died without a will. Lawyers for the victims encouraged Paddock’s mother — who, under Nevada law, became the heir by default — to give his assets to the estates of the 58 people killed by her son. The mother, Irene Hudson, transferred her right to inherit the estate in March of last year.

In addition to those killed, hundreds of others were injured in the shooting. However, lawyers say the compensation should go to the loved ones of the dead rather than the injured, saying the money would have greater impact on their lives than if the large number of people hurt in the rampage were also beneficiaries.

The conundrum over what to do with Paddock’s firearms underscores the increasingly complex and delicate considerations that have arisen for victims and their relatives as mass shootings have become a more frequent part of American life today.

The case also comes as an unparalleled number of gun control laws were passed in states around the country in the 15 months since the Las Vegas shooting on Oct. 1, 2017.

Mynda Smith, 43, whose older sister was fatally shot by Paddock, said she sees no point in destroying the guns he owned.

“My initial reaction is that destroying them is not going to change anything and it won’t bring any goodness,” Smith said. “But if some good can come out of selling them, I am for it.”

For Kyle Taylor, 32, whose father died in the massacre, deciding on the best use of Paddock’s weapons was “a moral dilemma.”

“The more money you could raise to help the families is great,” Taylor said. “But the idea of receiving money from equipment that was used by someone who took so many lives is creepy and unsettling.”

In the special administrator’s inventory of the estate, 23 rifles and a revolver were listed as having been found in Paddock’s room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. They were given a total value of $41,050.

At Paddock’s home in Mesquite, Nevada, $18,439 worth of guns and accessories — seven rifles, seven shotguns and five handguns — were found. And two shotguns and five handguns, with a combined value of just over $2,800, were collected from his Reno house, the inventory report showed.

Overall, each of the 58 families would receive about $24,000 once Paddock’s estate is divided up equally. Included in that figure would be a payout of close to $1,100 per family if the firearms were to be sold.

The cache of guns that belonged to Paddock — who attained significant wealth through high-stakes gambling and modest real estate deals before he lost much of it — is just one piece of his estate. It also includes a pair of houses, both in scenic retirement communities, an investment property and bank accounts.

Among the other items in the estate are two gaming vouchers, totaling more than $30,000, from the Mandalay Bay. It was from an upper floor room in the hotel that Paddock started firing at concertgoers on the Vegas Strip, in what was the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. He then took his own life.

The inventory of Paddock’s estate also showed that he had $455,758 in 13 bank and brokerage accounts.

The situation with the Paddock weapons is not unprecedented. When the federal government sought to hold an internet auction of personal items belonging to Theodore Kaczynski, who was sentenced to life in prison for the Unabomber crimes, several victims pursuing restitution from him were initially reluctant to agree to such a sale.

Although the money from the sale of Kaczynski’s writings, sunglasses, clothing and other possessions would go to them, the victims feared that the auction would bring Kaczynski more publicity and further expose their suffering. One victim who was not seeking restitution said he hoped that Kaczynski’s property would be destroyed or sealed for at least a century and then made available to “scholars of depravity.”

The auction went ahead in 2011 and raised more than $232,000 for the victims. Kaczynski carried out 16 mail bombings from 1978 to 1995 that killed three people and injured 28.

Though the matter of how best to handle Paddock’s guns remains unresolved, the estate has made progress in other areas. On Thursday, the judge overseeing the estate case approved the sale of Paddock’s Mesquite home to an Oregon couple for $425,000.

His residence in Reno is still on the market for $374,900, a reduction from the original listing price of $399,000 in July.

Bernadette Jones, who, with her husband, Daniel, bought the Mesquite home, said in an interview that the property met their criteria and that they were not spooked by the fact that it had belonged to one of America’s most notorious mass murderers, who stored many of his guns there.

“There is room to build a pool, it is a nice clean house that has hardly been lived in and there are nice neighbors who have been through a lot,” Bernadette Jones said.

She added, “We feel that our discernment is very good, and if we felt that things were not right, we would have walked away. If he had any personal items in there, buying would have been out of the question.”

The Joneses, who are in their 60s, had been looking to relocate to the area since the summer of 2017 to escape the dreary weather of Albany, Oregon.

Denton, the lawyer, said that the 58 families would not see any money raised by the estate for at least another year to give creditors time to file any claims.

Although lawyers for many of the surviving victims have said their clients will not sue the estate in order to preserve it, Denton pointed out that “the agreements are not in writing and they can change their minds at any time.”

“We would then have an insolvent estate and nobody would get anything,” she said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/06/us/stephen-paddock-guns-firearms.html" id="91cbc1f4-bfd6-3149-a47d-5944b4b55a18">The New York Times</a>.

A 'Moral Dilemma' After Las Vegas Massacre: Sell the Gunman's Weapons, or Destroy Them

When the gunman in the Las Vegas mass shooting died, he left behind a hoard of guns and firearm accessories in his two Nevada homes and the hotel suite he used as a perch for his attack.

All told, the gunman, Stephen Paddock, owned 50 guns, from pistols to high-powered long arms, and almost 40 firearm components. A special administrator appointed by a state court judge to determine the value of Paddock’s estate said in a recent report that the guns and equipment were worth about $62,340.

Now, the main lawyer involved in passing on Paddock’s nearly $1.4 million estate to the families of the 58 people he slaughtered is facing a quandary. Should the firearms be sold to raise as much money as possible for the bereaved, or would it be more appropriate to destroy the guns in an emblematic rejection of the kind of violence that Paddock carried out?

She said the estate would solicit feedback from the families of those killed and review applicable laws before a decision would be made. In the meantime, the guns and accessories are in the possession of the FBI.

In an email message, a spokeswoman for the bureau’s Las Vegas field office, Sandra Breault, declined to comment on whether the FBI would return some or all of the weapons to the estate.

Craddock, 40, who was killed during a protracted shootout with police, had been an engineer with the Department of Public Utilities, the city’s water and sanitary sewer services branch, where he helped maintain the mundane but crucial underpinnings of Virginia’s largest city.

Nothing had seemed amiss when he entered the agency’s building Friday because he had worked with the department for about 15 years, officials said. No one had suspected that he was armed, and many of the people he would kill or wound that afternoon were his colleagues.

He “was still employed” by the city at the time of the attack, according to David L. Hansen, the Virginia Beach city manager. “He had a security pass like all employees had and he was authorized to enter the building,” Hansen said.

It remains to be seen what the suspect was after. City officials declined to discuss a possible motive for the attack, but they did say there was no immediate indication that the gunman had targeted anyone. The police chief, James A. Cervera, quelled rumors Saturday that the suspect had recently been fired, and declined to say whether there had been friction between him and other employees.

But a person close to Virginia Beach’s city government, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said that the suspect had no history of behavioral problems until recently, when he had begun acting strangely and getting into physical “scuffles” with other city workers.

The person said that tensions had escalated in the past week, adding that the man had gotten into a violent altercation on city grounds and was told that disciplinary action would be taken.

Officials said the suspect was armed with two .45-caliber guns, at least one of which had a sound suppressor attached to it, and that both weapons had been purchased legally. He used extended magazines, which hold more ammunition than standard models, and reloaded several times in what the Virginia Beach police chief called “a long-term gunbattle” with officers.

Two more firearms were found at the suspect’s home, officials said.

Few details in the suspect’s past point to the staggering violence that would mark the end of his life. He had no obvious criminal history, court records show, only several traffic violations over the years.

He had a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering from Old Dominion University in Virginia. In 1996, he enlisted in the Virginia National Guard, where he was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 111th Field Artillery Regiment, in Norfolk as a cannon crew member, according to a state National Guard spokesman. He was discharged in 2002 at the rank of specialist. (The spokesman declined to specify the nature of the discharge.)

Before his job with the city, the suspect worked for private firms specializing in site planning and infrastructure, and had held a professional engineer license from the state since 2008. One of his hiring notices said his engineering experience included stormwater management and utility design for private and public systems. Employment listings also showed that he had worked for the Army Training and Support Center.

Several news releases issued by the city this year about road closings because of utility work listed the suspect’s name as the contact person for further information. He was the man who took residents’ questions, whose name was a public point of reference.

But on Saturday, after identifying him once as the man who plunged the city into grief, officials said they would never again utter his name in public.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/us/dewayne-craddock-virginia.html" id="11d0412c-33df-3677-a36f-9cbada515a68">The New York Times</a>.

City employee turned gunman reportedly had 'Scuffles' with his colleagues

Before DeWayne Antonio Craddock stormed a Virginia Beach municipal complex Friday, where law enforcement officials said he slaughtered a dozen people and injured several others, he had made his living in public service.

He could have been talking about 2019, particularly in the Northeast, where the weather over the last week or so has toggled from damp and chilly to briefly seasonal and sunny and back to wet and cold, with the possibility of snow Monday night in parts of New England.

What is putting a crimp on spring, which officially started back on March 20, and standing in the way of such seasonal delights as planting a garden and firing up the backyard barbecue?

The culprit is a convergence of soaking wet weather from the South and West and cold air gliding in from Canada, according to Marc Chenard, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service.

That combination could bring snow accumulations of 4 to 8 inches to higher elevations in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine late Monday night and Tuesday, especially in areas more than 2,000 feet above sea level, Chenard said.

“This is about as late into spring that you would see accumulating snowfall in that area,” he said, adding that the snow would probably be the wetter kind.

The moisture that will fall there as snow comes from the same storm system that began hammering areas of eastern Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi last week with heavy rains that continued, on and off, over the weekend.

“The rain amounts were pretty extreme, with some spots getting over 10 inches,” Chenard said.

Streets in New Orleans were awash on Sunday morning, and Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi declared a state of emergency in his state, where a number of counties were hard hit by flooding.

“In springtime, heavy rainfall is not uncommon, but this was still a pretty significant rainfall event in those areas,” Chenard noted.

Overall, the 12 months ending in April were the wettest 12-month period on record in the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whose records on the subject go back to 1895.

Experts say climate change may play a role in making the atmosphere wetter and storms more intense in North America. Astrid Caldas, a senior climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that figures from the National Climate Assessment show the amount of precipitation coming down during the heaviest rainfalls and snowfalls has risen significantly over the last 60 years: up 10% in the Southwest, and 55% in the Northeast.

“The cold spring weather does not mean global warming is not happening,” Caldas said. Even as average temperatures rise, she said, “there will always be cold snaps and weather like this.”

John Kinchla, owner of Amherst Nurseries in western Massachusetts, said the wet weather had delayed by about two weeks his company’s annual spring task of planting thousands of new trees.

Kinchla said that workers at the nursery, whose customers are mainly municipalities and landscapers, started planting Saturday when the weather was “gorgeous,” but had to stop Sunday when clouds and precipitation moved in again and the temperature dropped.

“We plant every year when the ground is dry enough for our equipment to work in,” he said. “But the ground has been too wet lately.”

Snow and freezing rain fell in the region on Sunday, and icy pavement caused a number of accidents on the Massachusetts Turnpike near the New York border, authorities said. Officials reduced the speed limit on the turnpike to 30 mph because of the conditions.

It was the first snow to fall in the area on Mother’s Day in almost a quarter-century, according to the National Weather Service in Albany, New York.

Outside of the Rocky Mountains, snowfall in May is uncommon in the Lower 48 states, but when it happens, the storms can be memorable. Buffalo, New York, got nearly 8 inches of snow on May 7, 1989, breaking an 80-year-old record. Marquette, Michigan, got nearly 2 feet on May 10, 1990. And on May 8, 1977, fans of the Grateful Dead emerged from the band’s legendary concert at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, to find that the temperature had dropped more than 30 degrees and snow was falling on the campus.

This article originally appeared in <a id="3f01af33-6071-3fa4-a51d-012fb8bf346e" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/us/snow-in-spring.html">The New York Times</a>.

Snowing in New England, soaking in the South -- you call this spring?

Mark Twain once said about the vagaries of spring, “I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.”

<h1>When the gunman in the Las Vegas mass shooting died, he left behind a hoard of guns and firearm accessories in his two Nevada homes and the hotel suite he used as a perch for his attack.</h1>

Mynda Smith, 43, whose older sister was fatally shot by Paddock, said she saw no point in destroying the guns he owned.

At Paddock’s home in Mesquite, Nevada, $18,439 worth of guns and accessories — seven rifles, seven shotguns and five handguns — were found. And two shotguns and five handguns, with a combined value of just more than $2,800, were collected from his Reno house, the inventory report showed.

Bernadette Jones, who, with her husband, Daniel, bought the Mesquite home, said that the property met their criteria and that they were not spooked by the fact that it had belonged to one of America’s most notorious mass murderers, who stored many of his guns there.

This article originally appeared in <a id="f1108956-9464-48c7-aa87-344bd18bf67e" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/06/us/stephen-paddock-guns-firearms.html">The New York Times</a>.

“The money that would come from selling the guns is not a huge amount, but it would help to make a difference in people’s lives,” said Alice Denton, the lawyer for the special administrator in the estate case.

A 'moral dilemma' after Las Vegas massacre: Sell the gunman's weapons, or destroy them

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Serge F. Kovaleski

Articles written by the author

Anonymous Donor Gives $62,000 to Destroy Las Vegas Gunman's Weapons

A 'Moral Dilemma' After Las Vegas Massacre: Sell the Gunman's Weapons, or Destroy Them

A 'Moral Dilemma' After Las Vegas Massacre: Sell the Gunman's Weapons, or Destroy Them

City employee turned gunman reportedly had 'Scuffles' with his colleagues

Snowing in New England, soaking in the South -- you call this spring?

A 'moral dilemma' after Las Vegas massacre: Sell the gunman's weapons, or destroy them