Saturday, July 25, 2015
Associated Press
LAFAYETTE, La.
A man who lost his family, home and businesses as he spent years angrily espousing right-wing extremism on television, the Internet and to anyone else who would listen did not say a word as he opened fire on strangers in a darkened movie theater, authorities said Friday.
John Russell Houser, 59, stood up about 20 minutes into Thursday night’s showing of “Trainwreck” and fired on the audience, killing two people and wounding nine with a semiautomatic handgun.
“That was a horrific scene in there – the blood on the floor, sticks in the seats [showing the trajectory of the bullets], the smell,” state police Col. Michael Edmonson said after top officials got an inside look at the theater.
“He took his time, methodically choosing his victims,” Gov. Bobby Jindal added. “One of the surviving wounded victims actually played dead to stay alive.”
Houser then tried to escape by blending into the fleeing crowd after one of his victims pulled a fire alarm and hundreds poured out of the theater complex. But he turned back as police officers approached, reloading and firing into the crowd before killing himself with a single shot inside the theater, police said.
“This is such a senseless, tragic action,” Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft said. “Why would you come here and do something like this?”
Investigators recovered Houser’s journals, were studying his online postings and trying to reconstruct his movements to identify a motive and provide what Edmonson called “some closure” for the victims’ families.
Craft said Houser bought the weapon legally at a pawnshop in Phenix City, Ala., last year, and that he had visited the theater more than once, perhaps to determine “whether there was anything that could be a soft target for him.”
He had been in Louisiana only since early July, staying in a Motel 6 room littered with wigs and disguises. His only known connection to Lafayette was an uncle who died there three decades ago.
Details quickly emerged about Houser’s mental problems, prompting authorities in Louisiana and Alabama to bemoan the underfunding of mental- health services in America.
Court records describe erratic behavior and threats of violence that led to a brief involuntary hospitalization in 2008 and a restraining order preventing Houser from approaching family members. Houser “has a history of mental- health issues, i.e., manic depression and/or bi-polar disorder,” his estranged wife told the judge.
Educated in accounting and law, he owned bars in Georgia – including one where he flew a Nazi banner out front as an anti-government statement. He tried real estate in Phenix City, Ala. But Houser’s own resume, posted online, says what he really loved to do was make provocative statements at local board meetings and in the media.
What prompted Houser to kill people Thursday night remains unknown.
He seemed like just another patron as he entered Lafayette’s Grand 16 theater, one of 25 people who bought tickets to the romantic comedy starring feminist jokester Amy Schumer as a boozing, promiscuous reporter.
Once inside, he sat by himself and gave others in the theater no reason for concern before he began shooting, firing first at two women who were sitting in front of him, then wounding nine other people.
Jeanerette High School English teacher Ali Martin and librarian Jena Meaux were credited with helping save lives amid the chaos. Meaux, who was shot in the leg, told her colleagues that Martin, who was shot in the kneecap, still managed to pull a fire alarm, their former principal Heath Hulin said.