TORRANCE, Calif. — Chris Harper-Mercer, the man identified as the gunman in the deadly rampage at Umpqua Community College in Oregon on Thursday, was a withdrawn young man who neighbors said wore the same outfit every day — combat boots, green Army pants and a white T-shirt — and was close to his mother, who fiercely protected him. In both Winchester, Oregon, and Torrance, California, where Harper-Mercer, 26, lived with his mother, Laurel Harper, neighbors remember a reclusive and seemingly fragile young man with a shaved head and dark glasses who appeared to recoil from social interaction. “He always seemed anxious,” said Rosario Lucumi, 51, who rode the same bus in Torrance as Mercer when she went to work. She said she believed he took it to El Camino College.
Investigators are now seeking to trace the path that led that reclusive young man to wage a rampage at the Roseburg, Oregon, college that left nine people dead.
Authorities said Harper-Mercer, who died during the attack, had acquired 14 weapons, six of which they recovered at the school. They are studying writings he left behind in which he described himself as angry and depressed. They say he also expressed an animus against organized religion. Harper-Mercer appeared to have sought community on the Internet, leaving hints behind of his passions, his loneliness, his likes and dislikes.
A picture of him holding a rifle appeared on a MySpace page with a post expressing a deep interest in the Irish Republican Army. It included footage from the conflict in Northern Ireland set to “The Men Behind the Wire,” an Irish Republican song, and several pictures of gunmen in black balaclavas. His parents have been divorced for about a decade. Former neighbors in Torrance said Harper-Mercer’s mother sought to protect him from all manner of neighborhood annoyances, from loud children and barking dogs to household pests.
Once, neighbors said, she went door-to-door with a petition to get the landlord to exterminate cockroaches in her apartment, saying they bothered her son. “She said, ‘My son is dealing with some mental issues, and the roaches are really irritating him,’ ” said Julia Winstead. “She said they were going to go stay in a motel. Until that time, I didn’t know she had a son.”
