A laptop recovered from the hotel room of Stephen Paddock, the man who launched the deadliest mass shooting in recent US history, is missing its hard drive, ABC News reported.
It is believed that Paddock removed the hard drive sometime before he fatally shot himself, but it is unclear what he did with it after. It has not yet been recovered. Investigators also discovered that Paddock had purchased software designed to erase files from a hard drive, but it is not yet known if the software was used.
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The missing hard drive is the latest roadblock in investigators’ search for answers. The laptop potentially could have provided priceless information regarding what Paddock had been researching prior to the shooting and could have possibly revealed his motive for the massacre that took place on the night of Oct. 1 and resulted in 58 deaths and more than 500 injuries. Initial autopsy reports failed to indicate what could have prompted the attack.
If Paddock did remove the laptop’s hard drive in an attempt to conceal digital evidence, he wouldn’t be the first mass shooter to do so.
The 2007 Virginia Tech shooter Cho Sheung Hui and 2008 Northern Illinois shooter Steven Kazmierczak both disposed of computer and cellphone parts, which were never later recovered. More recently, Adam Lanza, the man behind the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, destroyed the hard drive of his computer with a screwdriver or hammer.
