GOLETA, Calif. – The gunman fired for 10 minutes in streets filled with university students walking, biking and skateboarding in the beach community near Santa Barbara, picking off people one by one in a deadly rampage that chillingly mirrored threats made on a YouTube video posted that same night. Seven people were killed in all, including the shooter.
A Hollywood director believes his son, Elliot Rodger, was the lone gunman found dead behind the wheel of the BMW that crashed into a parked car, ending the shootings Friday night in Isla Vista near the University of California, Santa Barbara, the family’s lawyer said Saturday. Seven others remained hospitalized with serious injuries.
Authorities were not naming the shooter yet but said they had identified him. Investigators were analyzing a YouTube video in which a young man who identifies himself as Elliot Rodger sits in a car and looks at the camera – laughing often – and says he is going to take his revenge against humanity.
Alan Shifman – a lawyer who represents Peter Rodger, one of the assistant directors on “The Hunger Games” – issued a statement saying his client believes his son, Elliot Rodger, was the shooter. It was unclear how the son would have obtained a gun. The family is staunchly against guns, he added.
“The Rodger family offers their deepest compassion and sympathy to the families involved in this terrible tragedy. We are experiencing the most inconceivable pain, and our hearts go out to everybody involved,” Shifman said.
Ricardo Martinez said his son Christopher Martinez, 20, was killed in the shooting.
“When will this insanity stop? ... Too many have died. We should say to ourselves ‘Not one more,’” he said.
The shootings started around 9:30 p.m. in Isla Vista, a roughly half-square-mile community next to UC Santa Barbara’s campus and picturesque beachside cliffs.
Alexander Mattera, 23, said his friend Chris Johnson was walking out of an improv comedy show when he was shot in front of a popular pizza place. He stumbled into a nearby house.
“He walked into these random guys’ house bleeding,” he said.
Mattera was sitting at a bonfire with friends when at least one gunshot whizzed overhead. The friends ran for cover when they heard the barrage of gunfire.
“We heard so many gunshots. It was unbelievable. I thought they were firecrackers. There had to have been at least like two guns. There were a lot of shots,” he said.
The gunman got into two gun battles before crashing his black BMW into a parked car. It wasn’t immediately clear whether he was killed by gunfire or if he committed suicide. A semi-automatic handgun was recovered.
Brown said a YouTube video posted Friday that shows a young man describing plans to shoot women appears to be connected to the attack.
The man in the video describes loneliness and frustration because “girls have never been attracted to me,” and says, at age 22, he is still a virgin. The video, which is almost seven minutes long, appears scripted. The identity of the person in the video could not be independently confirmed.
Shifman, the attorney for the Rodger family, said the family called police several weeks ago after being alarmed by YouTube videos “regarding suicide and the killing of people” that Rodger’s son, Elliot Rodger, had been posting.
Police interviewed Elliot Rodger and found him to be a “perfectly polite, kind and wonderful human,” he said. Police did not find a history of guns, but did say Rodger “didn’t have a lot of friends,” had trouble making friends and didn’t have any girlfriends.
