New clues are being revealed in the deadly Louisiana movie theater shooting.
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A string instrument and song book are displayed next to the casket of Jillian Johnson during her funeral service at Delhomme Funeral Home in Lafayette, La., Monday, July 27, 2015.
Funerals were held Monday in Louisiana for Jillian Johnson and Mayci Marie Breaux, the two women killed when Houser opened fire in a theatre in the city of Lafayette. John Russell Houser stood up about 20 minutes into Thursday night’s showing of “Trainwreck” and fired on the audience with a semi-automatic handgun.
Pallbearers remove the casket of Mayci Breaux, 21, for her funeral service in Franklin, La. Superior Court – a petition was filed against Houser for a protective order.
Houser – a strident right-winger, hater of liberals and fan of Adolf Hitler – had made threats against family members, prompting his terrified wife to clear their house of all guns and weapons.
Officials in Georgia clarified Monday that John “Rusty” Houser was never involuntarily committed in 2008 despite previous reports – a distinction that would have prevented him from buying the gun he used in the rampage.
Johnson was killed Thursday by a gunman in a Lafayette movie theater. Breax and Jillian Johnson, 33, were killed and nine other people were wounded. Funeral services for both women were held Monday.
LAFAYETTE, La. – One was a talented artist who sang in an all-female band and planted trees to beautify her neighborhood.
The casket of Mayci Breaux is taken from the Church off the Assumption following her funeral service Monday, July 27, 2015.
Their assailant had come under the scrutiny of authorities in the past, but he managed to avoid the sort of legal consequences that might have blocked him from buying a gun.
Sheriff Heath Taylor in Russell County, Alabama, said his office denied him a concealed weapons permit in 2006 based on arson and domestic violence allegations, even though the victims declined to pursue charges.
Despite that sign that Houser was mentally troubled, he passed a background check and was able to legally purchase the gun he used last week to kill two people in a Louisiana movie theater, because that hospital stay was not defined by officials as an involuntary commitment.
“We know ATF reviewed our sale and said everything is right on our side”, said the store’s attorney, Eric B. That order would have allowed Houser to be evaluated by doctors for up to five days, plus another three days of observation, according to Probate Judge Marc E. D’Antonio, who was the chief clerk at the time in Muscogee County, where the hospital Houser was taken to is located. At that point, they could either release him, persuade him to be admitted by his own agreement or petition a local probate court judge to involuntarily commit him for treatment – a formal judgment called an adjudication.
(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert). Dondie LeBlanc Breaux, left, and Kevin Breaux, parents of Mayci Breaux, are hugged by clergy outside the Church of the Assumption, after her funeral in Franklin, La., Monday, July 27, 2015. She told cops Houser was bipolar and sometimes went off his meds. However, D’Antonio said his office reports all involuntary mental health hospitalizations to Georgia’s statewide criminal records system, and those records are eventually fed in a federal database run by the FBI.
As in similar cases of public massacres, the mental state of each alleged shooter also comes into question, along with the big talker- where and how did they get a gun?
“Somebody may be depressed, they may have gone through, lost their jobs or whatever, and they can overcome that”. He said she was a “tastemaker”, the type of person that if you showed up at a club or restaurant or an event and she was there, you knew you were in the right place.
“An order to apprehend, or a 10-13, are basically orders that say somebody has behaviors in the past 48 hours that might be construed as a danger to themselves or others”, D’Antonio said.
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