He said Houser was known to have undergone treatment for an unspecified mental illness while in Alabama in 2008 and 2009.
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She told her father that she did not hear the shooter say anything before opening fire. She said she was waiting for a bullet to be fired into her back.
Houser flew a large Confederate flag on a flagpole outside his house for a time, said neighbor Rick Chancey, but Houser later replaced it with a smaller rebel battle flag. Houser, 59, then killed himself. He also had swapped out the license plate on his auto, which would have made it harder to track him if he’d escaped.
“It is apparent that he was intent on shooting and then escaping”, Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft said. Edmonson said.
On right-wing extremist message boards, Houser praised Adolf Hitler as well as “the power of the lone wolf”, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose hate-group watchdogs began tracking Houser in 2005, when he registered to meet with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Floyd described Houser as an “angry man” who made “wild accusations” about all sorts of topics, and said he put him on to counter a Democratic voice because “he could make the phones ring”. Houser protests by hoisting a banner including a Nazi swastika. Agents wanted to know about Houser.
Houser also claims to have owned two short-lived bars – Rusty’s Buckhead Pub which was open for just two years in Lagrange, Georgia between 1998 and 2000 and Peachtree Pub which was open for a year and a half in Columbus, Georgia and closed in 1980.
The two dead were identified as Mayci Breaux, 21, from Franklin, Louisiana, and Jillian Johnson, 33, from Lafayette. Breaux was a radiology student at a nearby college. Ms Johnson ran clothing and art boutiques, played in a rock band and planted fruit trees for neighbours and the homeless.
The nine injured range in age from late teens to the 60s, police said.
Seven people were wounded, three of them critically, authorities said. The condition of the others wasn’t immediately available.
A school teacher quickly became a hero during the deadly shooting that took place at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana this past Thursday.
“We heard a loud pop we thought was a firecracker”, said Katie Domingue, who was in the theater watching Trainwreck with her fiance. “I didn’t hear anybody screaming either”. A spokesman with the department said an officer will be at the theater – around the clock – indefinitely.
Despite the fear and heartbreak, stories of heroism emerged.
On Saturday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal issued an executive order directing police to enforce state laws against disturbing the peace at funerals. “A man had actually dragged her out”.
In April 2008, Houser’s wife, Kellie, his daughter and others filed court papers seeking a temporary protective order against Houser, saying he had “perpetrated various acts of family violence” and had a history of bi-polar disorder. A judge granted the family’s petition to have him involuntarily committed to a hospital as “a danger to himself and others”.
He applied for a concealed carry permit in 2006, but was denied because of the arson and domestic violence charges.
His daughter, Kirbey Ellen Houser, was engaged to Andrew Michael Broome at the time, and though they were 23 and 26, he felt they were too young to be married. His wife filed for divorce in March in part because of erratic, sometimes violent, behavior, according to AP.
The estranged wife was unsure where her husband had been living since they split.
Rem Houser said he was shocked by his brother John’s alleged actions.
“I can’t speculate as to how this specific shooter was able to pass a background check”, Freilich said.
There were about 300 people inside the theatre building at the time of the shooting and 25 people in “Trainwreck”. Everything he left in the home was smashed and on the floor, and paint was splashed on the walls.
He had only been in Lafayette a matter of weeks, staying in a Motel 6 room littered with wigs and disguises. That teacher then managed to pull a fire alarm in the theater, he said.
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President Barack Obama was briefed on Air Force One while on his way to Africa. The jury found Thursday that the death penalty is justified, and is hearing evidence about Holmes’ schizophrenia before issuing a sentence.
