About 20 minutes into the movie, Houser opened fire on the crowd of 24 people with a 40-caliber semi-automatic handgun he had purchased legally at a pawn shop in Phenix City, Alabama.
Advertisement
We don’t think of movie theaters as sacrosanct spaces, the way we assume that schools or churches – the sites of other recent horrific mass shootings – will be.
Authorities said they knew the gunman’s identity but were not releasing his name during the early stage of the investigation. “This just shows these senseless acts of violence can literally happen anywhere”. The license plate on the auto had also been switched. Inside a Motel 6 room he rented, they found wigs, glasses and other disguises.
“Hitler is loved for the results of his pragmatism”, Houser wrote in January on the website stateofmind13.com. His body remained inside the theater several hours later.
Breaux, 21, and Johnson, 33, were killed in the theater shooting in Lafayette, LA.
“That was a horrific scene in there”, Colonel Mike Edmonson of the Louisiana state police said at the conference.
Lucius Fontenot met Johnson while both were studying art at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and he later produced an album for her band called The Figs.
The shooting evoked memories of the 2012 shooting at a theater in Aurora, Colorado, in which 12 people were killed and scores of others wounded. This is an bad night for the United States. “It’s scary, but I ride a bicycle also and I have people cut me off when I’m riding a bicycle, and that’s a little scarier, to tell you the truth”. Houser died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound before police were able to get into the theater.
But whatever the latest killer’s reasoning, it’s worth pausing for a moment to consider our specific losses as another arena of public life begins to feel unsafe.
Johnson was a well-known Lafayette businesswoman and musician. “It wasn’t to die as they did horribly in this theater here”.
Hulin said Meaux told the group that after Martin was shot, she still made her way to a fire alarm on the wall in the theater and pulled it. Henderson said Martin was shot in the kneecap, while Meaux was shot in the leg.
The filing says Houser’s wife, Kellie Maddox Houser, “has become so anxious about the defendant’s volatile mental state that she has removed all guns and/or weapons from their marital residence”. Houser was originally from Columbus, Georgia and at one point ran for office there.
Houser refused to back down after getting out, however, so his wife, daughter and other relatives also obtained a protective order after accusing him of having “perpetrated various acts of family violence”.
Her mother, Dondie Breaux, said in an interview with the New York Daily News that Mayci and Rodriguez had plans to settle down.
Alabama court records show Houser filed a small claims court lawsuit in 2004 claiming he was injured when he donated plasma at a Phenix City donation center. His family was concerned he could be a danger to himself and others, according to the petition.
Based on what police know, Houser was basically just “drifting along”, Craft said.
A LinkedIn page that appears to have belonged to Houser describes him as an entrepreneur with a specialty in investment management.
Advertisement
Craft praised the woman who set off the fire alarm and said she was a heroine because it forced people to move. Ibert said Breaux was a cheerleader in high school and described her as sweet, noting that she would always talk to younger students.
