Las Vegas killer Stephen Paddock's brother once threatened to kill a friend in California, court records show.
Bruce Paddock was living without permission in a home in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley in 2014 when his friend Hector Cruz, the owner, accused him of tampering with machinery, the records filed in Los Angeles show.
When Cruz confronted him, Bruce Paddock allegedly said, "If you keep (expletive) with me, I am going to kill you and drop you in the desert."
The 57-year-old Paddock also told Cruz, "Hit me like a man," and punched his antagonist in one arm.
Cruz said he got the menacing message.
"I am extremely afraid of Paddock, who has intimidated me by his violent character and destruction of my business office and my service bay," Cruz said in court papers, according to the website.
Cruz told the New York Daily News and said in court papers that Paddock liked to get high and sold methamphetamine and marijuana. His behavior is "extremely erratic and unpredictable," Cruz said.
He also told the Daily News that Bruce Paddock was filled with paranoia and installed hidden cameras in the house and work area, as well as in his car.
"He said he had stuff to make explosives," Cruz said. "He's just a crazy guy. He was getting money from his mother and leaching off the government. He was extremely intelligent, but he was just trash."
In a chilling coincidence, Stephen Paddock possessed explosives in his house and car. He also installed hidden cameras in the hallway and the hotel room he used as a sniper's nest Sunday in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.
Cruz said he knew of Stephen Paddock but said he never met him.
Another brother, Eric Paddock, was seen on televised interviews in front of his Florida home a day after Sunday night's shooting. The brothers' father was a bank robber who made the FBI's 10 most-wanted list in the 1960s.
A judge gave Cruz a temporary restraining order against Bruce Paddock.
"After I got the TRO, he drove by several times to keep intimidating me, and then I never saw him again," Cruz said.
Stephen Paddock, 64, shot from his room on the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay on the Las Vegas strip Sunday night, raining bullets on more than 22,000 people at an outdoor country music concert.
He used high-capacity magazines and "bump stock" devices, which convert semiautomatic rifles to near fully automatic rifles.
Fifty-eight people were killed and nearly 500 were injured _ either shot, trampled or hit by shrapnel. Stephen Paddock took his own life after the shooting.
