2014 Isla Vista Killings
On May 23, 2014, a killing spree occurred in Isla Vista, California, United States, starting with a stabbing attack at an apartment, and continuing with a series of drive-by shootings and vehicular attacks near the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Elliot Rodger, 22, killed seven people, including himself, and wounded thirteen others.
Killing Spree
The killing spree started at Rodger's apartment on Seville Road, where three men, later revealed to be his roommates, were found stabbed to death. Initial reports indicated a knife was used, but there are now beliefs that a machete and a hammer were used during the apartment killings.[10][13][1][3][14] He then went to the Alpha Phi sorority house located near the UCSB campus and knocked on the door for a few minutes. After no one answered, he began shooting people who were nearby; two members of the sorority Delta Delta Delta were killed and a third wounded while walking on the sidewalk.[9][15][16][17] After shooting the sorority members, Rodger fired at a nearby couple; the man was wounded, while the woman suffered a superficial graze wound.
Rodger then drove two blocks to the Isla Vista Deli Mart on Pardall Road, where he briefly got out of his car and fatally shot a student. While fleeing the scene, he was spotted by four responding foot-patrol officers, but they did not recognize him as the shooter.[9][18][20] He then drove to an area called "The Loop," where he fired at two pedestrians on the sidewalk, but missed both. Rodger then drove onto Del Playa Drive, where he brandished his gun at a woman, but did not shoot her.[18] As he drove west on Del Playa Drive, he continued firing, hitting several pedestrians, including a woman who was injured in the leg at a 7-Eleven convenience store, and also struck a bicyclist and a skateboarder with his car. Witnesses described seeing a black BMW 328i Coupé[25] that was speeding, sometimes on the wrong side of the street,[6] and "spraying bullets." Rodger reportedly talked to some of his victims before shooting them. Some witnesses initially believed Rodger was firing an air pistol.
Police response, attacker's death
Police responded to 9-1-1 calls received at 9:27 p.m., and sheriff's deputies in the area immediately responded on foot after hearing gunfire. While heading west on Del Playa Drive, Rodger spotted a deputy and exchanged gunfire at 9:33 p.m.[18][23] before fleeing in his vehicle, hitting a second bicyclist with his car in the process while passing and firing at students at the Isla Vista Church, which was concluding a service of worship at the time.[27][26][28] Heading onto an intersection of Camino del Sur and Sabado Tarde, Rodger fired repeatedly at pedestrians, wounding four.
He then encountered four more deputies as he drove east on Sabado Tarde and engaged three of them in a second shootout, during which he was wounded in the left hip.[10][20][18][16] Rodger then fled again, slammed into another bicyclist, and then crashed into a parked vehicle. Rodger was found dead in the vehicle with a bullet wound to his head; police later stated that it was believed he had committed suicide.[29][30] A total of seven people died, including Rodger, and thirteen others were wounded.
Aftermath
Police initially investigated nine separate crime scenes, later increasing the number to twelve.[32] A search of Rodger's car recovered three 9mm semiautomatic handguns—a Glock 34 target pistol and two SIG Sauer P226s—and more than 400 rounds of unspent ammunition, all loaded into 41 ten-round magazines. All three guns were purchased legally in three different cities.[10][1][24][30][33][34] Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said that there was video and written evidence suggesting the crime was premeditated and that preparations took over a year.[4][8][30] A search at Rodger's apartment recovered the bodies of his roommates and several items, including two machetes, a hammer, and a knife.[3][14]
A typed 138-page manifesto titled "My Twisted World" was received by about thirty people, including Rodger's psychiatrist Charles Sophy,[35][36] his parents and some of his other family members,[37] former schoolteachers, childhood friends, and ABC affiliate KEYT-TV, where a copy was obtained and first uploaded by journalist Matthew Keys.[38][39] Officers from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives began searches of the separate homes of Rodger's mother and father.[30] It was later revealed that Sophy called Rodger's mother at 9:17 p.m., ten minutes before the shooting spree started, to alert her of an email that was sent to both, which contained an attachment of his manifesto.[18] After hearing a radio news report of shootings in Isla Vista, Rodger's mother called Sophy again, and he mistakenly told her that the killings were unrelated to Rodger.
Victims
Three men were stabbed to death at Rodger's apartment. The victims were identified as Cheng Yuan "James" Hong, 20; George Chen, 19; and Weihan "David" Wang, 20.[42][43] Hong and Chen were confirmed to be Rodger's roommates, according to an apartment lease that listed them as tenants with Rodger, while police were investigating whether Wang was also a roommate or visiting the apartment on the night of the killings.[1][44][45][46][47][48] A law enforcement source stated that Wang was visiting the apartment at the time of the killings,[41] but other sources state that Wang shared the same apartment as Hong and Chen, who were his friends, and that he made plans of moving into another apartment prior to his death, due to complaints over Rodger playing loud music in the middle of the night.[49][50][3][14][48] Hong also made similar plans to move out of the apartment out of concern for his own safety.[51] Authorities are investigating the possibility that all three men were killed while they were sleeping.[41] All three men were students at UCSB.[18]
Three people, also UCSB students, were shot and killed by Rodger following the stabbings at his apartment. The victims were identified as Katherine Cooper, 22, and Veronika Weiss, 19, who were killed outside the sorority house; and Christopher Michael-Martinez, 20, who was killed at the Isla Vista Deli Mart. All six people who were killed were declared dead at the scenes of their attacks.[9]
Thirteen other people were injured, eight of them from gunshot wounds and four others by blunt trauma sustained when they were struck by Rodger's vehicle. The thirteenth injury was undetermined.[52] Eleven of the injured were taken to hospitals; seven were taken to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, where two are currently in serious condition, one in fair condition, and two others in good condition, while the seventh patient was released on the same day. The remaining four injured were taken to Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital, where they were all treated and released.
Perpetrator
Elliot Oliver Robertson Rodger (July 24, 1991 – May 23, 2014) was confirmed by police to be the sole perpetrator of the killings.[7][9][22][1] He was born in London, England, and moved to the United States when he was five years old. Rodger was raised in Los Angeles. His mother is Li Chin Rodger, who is Malaysian,[54] and his father is British-American filmmaker Peter Rodger, whose credits include working as a second unit assistant director for The Hunger Games.[55] His stepmother is Moroccan actress Soumaya Akaaboune.[7] His paternal grandfather was photojournalist George Rodger.[56] He had a younger sister and a younger half-brother.
According to his family's attorney and a family friend, Rodger saw multiple therapists since he was eight years old and while he was a student at Santa Barbara City College, although the school later claimed he was no longer taking classes.[16] The lawyer also said that Rodger was diagnosed with "highly functional Asperger syndrome" as a child.[58][59]
Prior to attending Santa Barbara City College, Rodger attended Taft High School[60] in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, and Crespi Carmelite High School, an all-male Catholic school in Encino, Los Angeles. During his time at Crespi Carmelite High, he was bullied by other students, who once taped his head to his desk when he fell asleep.[9][61] By the ninth grade, Rodger was "increasingly bullied" and he stated that he "cried by myself at school every day." In 2012, Rodger stated that the "one friend I had in the whole world who truly understood" him "blatantly said he didn't want to be friends anymore," without offering him a reason for abandoning the friendship.[62] Rodger was also bullied online and harassed by "an internet gang."[63] He was described as "a serial killer in the making" by users of Bodybuilding.com, an online forum of which Rodger was a registered member.[64][63] Rodger graduated from Independence High School in Lake Balboa, Los Angeles, in 2010.
He had a YouTube account, a Facebook account, and a blog titled Elliot Rodger's Official Blog, all of which contained posts expressing loneliness and rejection. His manifesto mentioned a number of drugs that he was prescribed to use, although how long he was being treated with them and the identity of the drugs currently remain unknown.[28] In his manifesto, Rodger named as Dr. Charles Sophy as his psychiatrist.[62][65] Sophy was one of several people who received emails with attachments of Rodger's manifesto.[66] A friend of Rodger's later claimed that he frequently took creatine, a bodybuilding supplement that was introduced to him by other members of Bodybuilding.com.
Incidents
In a previous incident that occurred on July 20, 2013,[67] Rodger "wrote that he tried to shove 'girls' at a party over a ledge, but he couldn't do it, and then men rushed to him and pushed him over." He stated that he "felt a snap in [his] ankle, followed by a stinging pain" and "tried to get away from there as fast as [he] could." Realizing that he left his Gucci sunglasses at the social gathering, Rodger returned to retrieve them but the "same people he had tangled with before began mocking him and calling him names, then dragged him into the driveway to beat him up." One of Rodger's neighbors stated that "he saw Rodger come home, crying" and said that Rodger claimed that he was going to kill the men who attacked him, and "kill myself."[62] He later stated in his manifesto that the incident was the final trigger for his planning of the killing spree.[67] Rodger also stalked and threw coffee on a couple and two girls sitting at a bus stop for not paying attention to him, as well as assaulting a group playing kickball, as documented in his manifesto.[68][67] He also admitted to a childhood friend that he wanted to "hold down and rape women."[69]
On April 30, 2014, a month prior to the killings,[30] his parents reported him to police after being concerned about his behavior and YouTube videos. He would later state in his manifesto that he had already planned the killings and purchased his guns by that time, and that officers who interviewed him would have nearly exposed his plans if they conducted a search of his bedroom.[22][70] Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown later commented that investigating deputies "determined he did not meet the criteria for an involuntary hold" and that Rodger told them "it was a misunderstanding."[59]
Rodger had prior contact with the police on two other occasions. The first was after his assault at the social gathering on July 2013, when he claimed he had been assaulted, but investigators determined that he might have been the aggressor.[15][67] The second incident occurred on January 15, 2014, when Rodger accused his roommate Cheng Yuan Hong of stealing his candles. Hong was arrested and charged with "petty theft infraction" for stealing Rodger's candles; he pled guilty to the charge.[71][72] Hong, who went by the name "James," was one of Rodger's stabbing victims.
Manifesto and online posts
Rodger posted a video on YouTube on the night before the attack, titled Elliot Rodger's Retribution, in which he complained of being rejected by women and described details of his upcoming attack,[8] also laying out his motivations and plans.[73] Police said they were investigating the video. In the wake of the killings, the video was deleted from Rodger's account, but it was repeatedly re-posted by other users as copies.[74][75][76] In the video, he says:
Well, this is my last video, it all has to come to this. Tomorrow is the day of retribution, the day in which I will have my revenge against humanity, against all of you. For the last eight years of my life, ever since I hit puberty, I've been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires all because girls have never been attracted to me. Girls gave their affection, and sex and love to other men but never to me.[77]
I'm 22 years old and I'm still a virgin. I've never even kissed a girl. I've been through college for two and a half years, more than that actually, and I'm still a virgin. It has been very torturous. College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure. Within those years, I've had to rot in loneliness. It's not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me. I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. It's an injustice, a crime, because... I don't know what you don't see in me. I'm the perfect guy and yet you throw yourselves at these obnoxious men instead of me, the supreme gentleman.
Rodger posted his thoughts on the Bodybuilding.com forum.[64] His manifesto specifically mentions a "War on Women" as the second phase of his plan for "starving him of sex."
In "My Twisted World," he also outlined some of his plans:
On the day before the Day of Retribution, I will start the First Phase of my vengeance: Silently killing as many people as I can around Isla Vista by luring them into my apartment through some form of trickery.[79]
The Second Phase will take place on the Day of Retribution itself, just before the climactic massacre. ... My War on Women. ... I will attack the very girls who represent everything I hate in the female gender: The hottest sorority of UCSB.[80]
In the manifesto, he also stated that he planned to kill his half-brother and stepmother, but wasn't mentally prepared to kill his father.
Controversy over video airing
The airing of Rodger's YouTube video Elliot Rodger's Retribution has received controversy. Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC's morning talk show Morning Joe, commented on the video's airing, "I think if we showed that video again, which we very well could, I'd want to cover it in the context of mental health. I would like to have an expert on the set with us—someone who's an expert not only in warning signs but in these personalities and/or conditions." Previously, Brzezinski and her co-host Joe Scarborough had interrupted an airing of the video during the talk show.
Several other news networks have also restricted airing of the video out of fears of copycat crimes. These include ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News, while Fox News Channel refused to air the video altogether, instead showing five still photographs at the request of the network's vice-president Michael Clemente. An ABC News spokesman, speaking for network president James Goldston, stated, "James said that unless there is a specific editorial reason to use it, we would err on the side of not using it. We are going to be very judicious about the use of that video, mindful that its continued use turns it into wallpaper."
Reactions
Immediate reaction
California Governor Jerry Brown offered condolences to the families of victims and stated that he was "saddened to learn of this senseless tragedy." University of California President Janet Napolitano said in a statement while at Laney College, "This is almost the kind of event that's impossible to prevent and almost impossible to predict." Delta Delta Delta reacted to the news of the deaths of members Katherine Cooper and Veronika Weiss, saying, "Tri Delta is devastated to learn of the tragic event at the University of California, Santa Barbara and so very saddened to learn of the death of two of our members. Our hearts go out to their families and our sisters at Gamma Theta. Tri Delta's staff, volunteers and local alumnae are working with the chapter to provide support as they grieve this loss." Associated Students of the University of California, Santa Barbara President Ali Guthy, along with the rest of the executive board, provided counseling resources on Facebook for students to utilize. UCSB also released a statement regarding the attacks, saying, "Our campus community is shocked and saddened by the events that occurred last night in the nearby community of Isla Vista. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families who are grieving and mourning as a result of this tragedy."
Rodger's family issued a statement expressing their sympathies for the victims, saying, "We offer our deepest compassion and sympathy to the families involved in this terrible tragedy. We are experiencing the most inconceivable pain and our hearts go out to everyone involved." The statement was read by the family lawyer.
Students and community members gathered at Anisq'Oyo' Park in Isla Vista on the evening of May 24, 2014, for a candlelight memorial to remember the victims.[82][83] In addition, the pastor of Isla Vista Church, one of the locations targeted by gunfire during the attacks,[27] made church members "available throughout the weekend for students who would like to receive prayer or need to talk."[84][85] On May 26, UCSB canceled classes for the following day and scheduled a memorial service for that afternoon. It also set up counseling services and emergency housing for displaced students.
Gun control, mental health criticism
The attacks renewed calls for gun control and improvements in the health care system, with Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal saying, "A year and half ago it seemed like we were on the verge of, potentially, legislation that would stop the madness and end the insanity that has killed too many young people, thousands, tens of thousands since Sandy Hook. I hope, I really, sincerely hope that this tragedy, this unimaginable, unspeakable tragedy, will provide impetus to bring back measures that would keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people who are severely troubled or deranged like this young man was." Blumenthal also commented in regards to the mental health debate, "I am going to urge that we bring back those bills, maybe reconfigure them to center on mental health, which is a point where we can agree that we need more resources to make the country healthier and to make sure that these kinds of horrific, insane, mad occurrences are stopped. And the Congress will be complicit if we fail to act." California Senator Dianne Feinstein blamed the NRA's "stranglehold" on gun laws for the shooting spree and said "shame on us" in Congress for failing to do something about it.[86] Pennsylvania Republican Timothy F. Murphy, a clinical psychologist, said his bipartisan mental health overhaul would be a solution and urged Congress to pass it.
Richard Martinez, the father of victim Christopher Michael-Martinez, gave a speech in which he placed the blame of the attacks on "craven, irresponsible" politicians and the National Rifle Association.[88][89] Martinez later urged the public to join him in "demanding immediate action" from members of Congress in regards of gun control. He also expressed his sympathy towards Rodger's parents.[90] Rodger passed a background check as required by California's universal background check law.
Criticism was also aimed at the inability of sheriff's deputies to properly act during their April 30, 2014 investigation into Rodger after he was reported by his parents regarding concerns about his YouTube videos. Doris A. Fuller, the executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, stated that California law permitted emergency psychiatric evaluations of potentially dangerous individuals through provisions, but such actions were never enabled during the investigation. She said, "Once again, we are grieving over deaths and devastation caused by a young man who was sending up red flags for danger that failed to produce intervention in time to avert tragedy. In this case, the red flags were so big the killer's parents had called police...and yet the system failed."
Comments on misogyny
In the wake of the killing spree, women's groups have sparked conversations of how the killings were connected to broader misogyny. Social media included feelings of anger and horror at the sexual expectations and violence directed at women, and refocused on campus climate issues.[91] Comments made by Rodger in his manifesto and videos have also inspired an increasingly popular Twitter hashtag called #YesAllWomen, in which women shared examples of their fears of violence committed by men. The hashtag has since drawn attention to such violence, especially incidents of rapes that occur on college campuses.[92] The hashtag originated from another hashtag called #NotAllMen, which was used as a defensive response against "feminist arguments". Commenting on the popularity of #YesAllWomen, MSNBC political commentator Melissa Harris-Perry said, "It is stunning to watch the truly global response. It's an opportunity to talk about the sense of fear, the possibility of violence, that is part of the daily vulnerability that women live with around the world."
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