“Premeditated mass murder” just outside one of America’s most idyllic, envied campuses.
The statement in my headline comes from an article in The Daily Nexus, the UC Santa Barbara student newspaper.
**************
Update: There was only one shooter.
[A] YouTube video titled “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution” appeared to be connected to the killing spree.
In the video, a young man sits behind the wheel of a parked car and rants about how he’s been ignored by women at UCSB and that his sexual advances have been rejected. He promises to go to Isla Vista on Friday night to seek revenge against women — especially sorority members — by slaughtering them.
Rodger’s Facebook page indicates he’s from Calabasas, and shows him sitting in a black BMW coupe.
The gunman’s car was a black BMW coupe.
******************
My searching around online suggests the shooter may have been the son of a Los Angeles-based film director/photographer.
******************
A somewhat similar act of femicide.
******************
Confirmation: The shooter is the son of Peter Rodger, “a special unit director on The Hunger Games and director of Oh My God, a documentary the screened during the Cannes Film Festival in 2009.”
*******************
There are of course also similarities to the Virginia Tech massacre: A mentally disturbed young man of college age makes an angry video promising revenge on a world that has disrespected him; he then gets a gun and starts shooting in areas full of college students.
*******************
Incredibly, it gets worse. The shooter stabbed his three roommates to death before he began shooting near UC Santa Barbara.