After what Mann described as a long pause, the gunman, identified by police as John Russell Houser, then proceeded to fire in a semi-circle. In protest, he displayed a swastika outside his bar, explaining that “the people who used it – the Nazis – they did what they damn well pleased”.
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“America is so sick that I now believe it to be the enemy of the world”, he wrote on one discussion forum. 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, he said.
Houser moved with his wife, Kim, to Phenix City in 2005, the same year that she filed domestic violence charges against him. But he said he has officers researching whether Houser would have had the same outcomes if he’d tried to buy guns or apply for concealed carry permits in Louisiana.
John Russell Houser also booby-trapped the place by twisting and igniting the gas starter tube in the fireplace, officials said.
Craft said Houser bought the weapon legally at a pawnshop in Phenix City, Alabama, 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”.
Some security experts say that they still find security wanting at many theaters.
“It is apparent that he was intent on shooting and then escaping”, Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft said.
Law enforcement officials who have spent the past two days investigating Houser’s shooting rampage, which left two people dead and nine wounded, said Saturday they still are trying to understand the gun purchase and if any mistakes were made along the way. “Right now the important thing is to show them all the love and prayer and support”, Jindal said. He said there was no known connection between the gunman and any of the victims. It “did produce a fruitful national conversation – not on guns, but on the symbolism of the Confederate flag, which the shooter adopted as a banner of his racist beliefs”, the Post noted.
Emily Mann had just finished laughing at a raunchy moment in the film Trainwreck Thursday evening when the mood in the Grand 16 Theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, changed dramatically.
More than 300 people were in the Louisiana multiplex when Houser began shooting some 20 rounds into an audience of about 25 people watching the comedy “Trainwreck”. Police released Houser’s identity early on Friday, and within hours a picture emerged of a drifter who harbored hatred of blacks and at times struggled with mental illness.
Of the first search results was Houser’s LinkedIn page, which contained a photo almost identical to the one displayed at the police press conference.
“Nothing that made me alarmed or that would signal that something like this would happen, I never saw that”, he said. “People were screaming”.
Matt Bogaard, whose Bogaard Group Intl. advises companies on security and risk management, said that there aren’t “any pending threats or unusual concerns surrounding the safety of movie theaters today”. “In that moment, you don’t think about anything”. “You still have to take your families out”.
UPDATED: Local media is now reporting that three are confirmed dead and seven are injured with their injuries ranging from critical to non life threatening. Col. Michael Edmonson called “some closure” for the victims’ families. He said early Friday that he had spoken with two teachers who had been in the theater together.
She said her husband was on daily medications for manic-depression and bipolar disorder at the time. One person underwent surgery and “was not doing well”, Craft said. As she ran through the movie theater to the parking lot, she could hear people yelling that there was a shooter inside. Houser’s only known relative in Lafayette, an uncle, died 35 years ago. Incidentally, the day of the shooting was also the 204th day of the year, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, a crowd-sourced project, it said.
Rem Houser of Hamilton, Georgia, told CNN before his brother John “showed up out of the blue” and borrowed the money, he hadn’t been in contact with the family for about 10 years. The protective order stemmed from Houser’s “erratic” behavior attempting to prevent his daughter from marrying her then-fiancé.
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It’s unclear where Houser went after the eviction, but his wife filed for a divorce in March.
