Authorities say there were about 300 people at the movie theater at the time of the shooting and 25 tickets were sold for “Trainwreck”, the movie where the shooting took place.
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“By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs a woman pulled me around”.
“It’s a movie, if you can’t take your family without living in fear that’s ridiculous”, said Tyus. Republican Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal travelled to Lafayette, a city of about 120,000 people roughly 90 kilometres southwest of Baton Rouge. Police said they did not know why the suspect launched the attack. Houser also swapped the licence plates on his 1995 Lincoln Continental before parking it by the cinema’s exit door.
Randall Mann said his 21-year-old daughter, Emily, was sitting in the same row as Houser.
Sgt. Daniel Seuzeneau, a police department spokesman, said officers typically work security details at the theater on Friday and Saturday nights, which are busy times. In addition to the gun, he was carrying two 10-round magazines of bullets.
One of the victims in Thursday night’s movie theater shooting in Lafayette, La., graduated from Hillwood High School in Nashville in 2000.
But w hat prompted Houser to kill people remains unknown.
President Barack Obama was briefed on Air Force One while on his way to Africa.
The gunman, who arrived in Lafayette early this month and bunked down in a hotel several kilometers from the theater, tried to escape with the crowd after the shooting but failed to do so as the police arrived at the scene nearly immediately.
Authorities said seven people were wounded, three critically. The wounded ranged in age from their teens to their 60s, and one was listed Friday in critical condition. Two people, Mayci Breaux, 21, and Jillian Johnson, 33, died of gunshot wounds.
Ms Breaux’s body was brought to the same hospital where she was preparing to become a radiology technician. Johnson owned a Lafayette gift shop.
“Her friend literally jumped over her and, by her account, actually saved her life”, Jindal said.
They described Houser as a “lone white male” with a criminal history. They said he made ominous and disturbing statements, and he suffered from “manic depression and/or bi-polar disorder”.
“She was really tall, taller than the other girls”, Jennifer Kalis said. A judge granted the family’s petition to have him involuntarily committed to a hospital as “a danger to himself and others”. The record was about 10 to 15 years old, according to NBC News. A domestic violence complaint was filed against Houser in October 2005, but he was never prosecuted or arrested.
“We’ve worked so hard to be known for something so much better”, she said.
“If you had turned it on, it would have blown [flames] out”, Russell County (Ala.) Sheriff Heath Taylor said.
“It does appear that it was random”, said Sgt.
Houser was a member of the conservative Tea Party, according to Tea Party Nation.com, and he was a guest host on a now-defunct political commentary show.
CBS46 has learned that Houser used to live in Georgia.
In response to a thread in May 2013 about the fall of the United States, Houser wrote: “Truth carries with it an understanding of death”. During his three-week stay in the city, the man from Phenix City, Alabama, had visited the theater before.
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“They heard a couple of pops and didn’t know what it was”, Randall Mann said.
