Seven dead including gunman in 'mass murder' California shooting

Seven dead including gunman in 'mass murder' California shooting

• Seven injured, one life-threateningly, in Friday night incident
• Santa Barbara sheriff: suspect 'severely mentally disturbed'
• Police investigate YouTube video as reports name suspect
• University: 'several students taken to local hospitals'

Seven people have been killed in a shooting near a college campus in California, in what authorities described as “premeditated mass murder”. Seven more people were injured, one with injuries police said were life-threatening and required surgery.

The gunman, who police said was one of the people killed, attacked at approximately 9.27pm on Friday night, driving a black BMW near the University of California at Santa Barbara campus in the Isla Vista neighbourhood. The identities of the victims were not immediately released.

The Santa Barbara county sheriff, Bill Brown, who said the name of the suspected gunman would not be released, pending notification of relatives, confirmed that police were investigating a video posted on YouTube. He said: "It would appear that [it] is connected.”

The video, entitled Elliot Rodger's Retribution and published on Friday, showed a young man who said he was a 22-year-old virgin, complaining that women had rejected him.

"I will have my revenge against humanity," he said, vowing to kill students and Isla Vista residents. "I will punish all of you for it."

The account that posted the video contained 20 clips, including the titles “Why do girls hate me so much?”,“Life is so unfair because girls don't want me” and “My reaction to seeing a young couple at the beach, Envy”.

It was reported that the man in the videos, which were taken down on Saturday afternoon, had been identified locally as the son of an assistant director on the blockbuster Hunger Games film series.

Later, an attorney for the director, Peter Rodgers, said the family believed his son was responsible for the shooting. Alan Shifman told the Associated Press the family had not yet seen his body, but they had been told he was killed and believed he killed six people.

Earlier, Sheriff Brown described the shootings as “a premeditated mass murder”. He also described the gunman as “severely mentally disturbed”, called the incident “the work of a madman” and added that “a lot more information will come out that will give a clearer picture of just how disturbed this individual was".

Brown said police believed the suspected gunman acted alone, and that about 10 minutes elapsed betwen the first 911 calls and the suspected gunman being found dead in his car.

On Saturday morning, the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) released a statement. It said: “The UC police department is working closely with the Santa Barbara sheriff’s office in support of the ongoing investigation.

“We have been notified that several of our students were taken to local hospitals last night, but we do not have additional information at this time. Our hearts and prayers go out to the family and friends of those affected.”

The university said it was making counselling services available and had set up emergency housing for those affected.

The county sheriff’s office said: “This is a very active and complex investigation involving approximately nine different crime scenes. We are in the process of interviewing a large number of witnesses and ask for the public’s assistance in locating others.”

Witnesses interviewed by a local television station reported seeing the car speeding through the streets as the gunman fired from it. Brown confirmed that the gunman exchanged fire with sheriff’s deputies in two separate gunfights, before crashing into a parked car.

The suspect was found dead of a gunshot wound in the car, where authorities recovered a semiautomatic handgun. Brown said he did not know if the suspect had been shot by deputies, or if he had killed himself.

One student told KEYT-TV that he saw shots fired from the car, fatally striking one woman and critically injuring another. "I heard shots, scream, pain," Michael Vitak said.

Another, visibly shaken student told the station she was approached by the driver of a black BMW who flashed a handgun and asked: "Hey, what's up?"

The student, who did not provide her full name, said thought he was carrying an airsoft gun and kept walking. She said seconds later, she felt something buzz by her head and quickly realised they were bullets.

Robert Johnson, a 21-year-old UCSB student, said the car drove past him at a busy intersection and that he heard "popping noises" that he mistook for firecrackers or a car backfiring.

"Then the sound came again, and by that point it had pulled up in front of a convenience store deli, and someone in the car was firing into a crowd of about eight, 10 people that were gathered in front of the store," he said.

"Everyone that was being fired upon, they all jumped and scrambled to run inside the store.”

The car had darkly tinted windows and the occupant was not visible, Johnson said.

The county sheriff's statement said: “The shootings began at approximately 9.27pm on 23 May when reports of shots fired in the Isla Vista area were called in to the Santa Barbara county emergency communications centre. Sheriff’s deputies responded and found several victims suffering from gunshot wounds.

“At approximately 9.33pm, six minutes after the initial call was received, the suspect engaged a group of responding deputies with gunfire. The deputies returned fire and the suspect fled in his vehicle.

“Seconds later the suspect was again spotted by another deputy and another exchange of gunfire occurred. The suspect fled down Del Playa Drive and eventually crashed into a parked vehicle.”

Isla Vista, a small community next to UC Santa Barbara's campus, is home to 23,000 people. The area has a reputation for excessive partying.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/24/drive-by-shooting-near-uc-santa-barbara-leaves-seven-dead

Guns, guns, guns!

Yeah, did you hear about the law in (the U.S. state of) Georgia? They'll let you carry a gun anywhere now; bars full of rowdy people, whatever. Luckily, even though Georgia is right-leaning, polls show that people there think the law goes too far.

On this young man -- I think everyone's been at the point where they wonder why they can't find a partner or whatever; I just never heard of anyone going this crazy over it!

Wanted to kill blonde sluts apparently.

the news claimed he was seeing several therapists, guess they never helped...

Here's the video he (allegedly allegedly allegedly) posted to YouTube just before the murders. I can understand why he had a problem attracting women, he's a fucking creep ...

Jesus. Those poor people.
It always pisses me off when the gunman dies too....it's like the easy way out....

The pressures of an overcrowded modern society.

Another mass killing because someone cared about what others thought of him, and because he felt "different".

Does anyone think Vladimir Putin is doing anything different?

Evidently his own parents had warned the authorities that he was dangerous and wanted him sectioned, but they assessed him, refused to commit him and said he posed no risk.

Tesstacious wrote:Evidently his own parents had warned the authorities that he was dangerous and wanted him sectioned, but they assessed him, refused to commit him and said he posed no risk.  

Did I read he was the son of the director who directed Hunger Games?

Ben_Reilly wrote:

Here's the video he (allegedly allegedly allegedly) posted to YouTube just before the murders. I can understand why he had a problem attracting women, he's a fucking creep ...

No shit, the way he kept laughing    He clearly should have been sectioned and his parents were right.

Tesstacious wrote:Evidently his own parents had warned the authorities that he was dangerous and wanted him sectioned, but they assessed him, refused to commit him and said he posed no risk.  

He should have been sectioned.

David wrote:

Tesstacious wrote:Evidently his own parents had warned the authorities that he was dangerous and wanted him sectioned, but they assessed him, refused to commit him and said he posed no risk.  

He should have been sectioned.

Just because some people said thy think he should?

You can only go off what you see yourself - ask Benji - he ignored what everybody said about other posters - went off how they appeared at that moment.

BigAndy9 wrote:

David wrote:

He should have been sectioned.

Just because some people said thy think he should?

You can only go off what you see yourself - ask Benji - he ignored what everybody said about other posters - went off how they appeared at that moment.

I guess we have the benefit of hindsight Andy but I can't imagine it was an easy decision for his parents to ask for him to be sectioned. They must have been deeply concerned   

feelthelove wrote:

BigAndy9 wrote:


Just because some people said thy think he should?

You can only go off what you see yourself - ask Benji - he ignored what everybody said about other posters - went off how they appeared at that moment.

I guess we have the benefit of hindsight Andy but I can't imagine it was an easy decision for his parents to ask for him to be sectioned.  They must have been deeply concerned   

Yes they knew their son was not well and indeed they were very concerned   

I want to err on the side of caution when it comes to declaring a person to have deficient mental faculties.  It is not to be treated lightly.

What a fantastic political weapon if we could declare someone mentally incompetent without proper evidence and/or controls.  Not only would the Republicans attempt to impeach Obama, but they would launch parallel proceedings to have him declared mentally incompetent.

FTL is correct in that in this matter we have the benefit, today, of hindsight.  But that is a state of affairs that didn't exist when the authorities visited Rodger and had to make that decision.  Under that state of affairs, you can't be too cavalier.  Otherwise, you are going to find yourself like JD and capital punishment--shoot first and ask questions afterwards.

BTW, yes eds...his father was an assistant director of the film Hunger Games.

 

Helen Razer (via Crikey.com.au) wrote:
...........  If you want to look for evidence of just what horror racism in America can achieve, you don’t need to go to Benedict Canyon. Go a few kilometres away to South Central Los Angeles or Google the US Census Bureau. And it is there where you might find the evidence for sexism, too.

That’s the thing about the everyday horror of social inequality. It’s boring, and it never makes headlines. Most of the violence it produces is niggling and slow and diffuse, not hard and fast and centralised. And it doesn’t manifest, as much as we might will it to, in the bloodthirsty actions of people who are the product of influences too various and convoluted to be easily explained or understood.

Make no mistake, this PUA stuff is icky. Sexism is real. But to say that these things led to these particular deaths is radically myopic. To say that all aggression enacted toward a woman is misogynist is just plain wrong. Not only does this latest giddy hypothesising fail to (a) buoy a pending bill for gun control and (b) acknowledge that white US citizens have been in the habit of bizarrely killing each other in small numbers and for peculiar reasons shortly after stepping off the cult-ship Mayflower. It actually makes feminists looks as stupid as the people who want to see Dance Dance Revolution banned in connection with massacre. And, to borrow the rage of all the commentators previously quoted, that makes me Unapologetically Angry and Full of Grief. As a feminist and as a critic of cultural goods.

This is not an attempt to minimise the extraordinary tragedy in Santa Barbara wrought by inexplicable horror or the ordinary tragedies wrought by the fictions of gender and race. Rather, it is an urging not to blame cultural goods for social ill. It is a plea not to see books, pamphlets, websites, records or sensationalised report of murder as anything but a possible illustration of ill, not its origin.

And it is a reminder that the First Amendment is the good one. It’s the Second we have to worry about.

Read More @  http://dailyreview.crikey.com.au/santa-barbara-killings-murder-by-the-book/?utm_source=The+Rundown&utm_campaign=439fb146b2-The_Rundown_Tuesday_27_May27_5_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_33b9e8bf4f-439fb146b2-81963429
 

 ::gnslnger::