A 22 year-old California man, who is the son of an assistant director for The Hunger Games movie franchise, killed six people Friday night in what police are calling a “premeditated mass murder”.
Elliot Rodger, 22, left behind a trail of disturbing videos announcing his intention to “annihilate” people, including “girls”, whom he blamed for his failed and lonely love life.
In a press conference Saturday, Santa Barbara County sheriff Bill Brown described Rodger as “severely mentally disturbed”, according to KEYT in Los Angeles.
Police say Rodger drove his black BMW near the University of California, Santa Barbara campus and opened fire in a series of drive-by shootings, killing six and injuring seven.
Police exchanged fire with Rodger, who was found in his car dead from a gunshot wound.
It is unclear whether the gunshot was self-inflicted or from police.
Rodger, whose father is Peter Rodger, an assistant director of the popular The Hunger Games franchise, announced his plans to carry out the mass-shooting in a chilling video posted to his Youtube account.
“Well, this is my last video,” said Rodger, who filmed the video which he titled “Retribution” in what appears to be his BMW.
“It all has to come to this. Tomorrow is the day of retribution,” he said, saying that he would get “revenge against all of humanity”.
“For the last eight years of my life, ever since I’ve 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,” he continued.
“I’m still virgin. It has been very tortuous,” said Rodger, who complained that “it’s not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me.”
Rodger, who said he had attended UC, Santa Barbara for over two-and-a-half years, raged against men who had more success with women than he did, calling them “brutes”.
“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,” he said, occasionally laughing maniacally after some of his threats.
“On the day of retribution I am going to enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB. And I will slaughter every single spoiled stuck up blonde slut I see inside of there.”
“You will finally see that I am, in truth, the superior one. The true alpha male.”
Rodger was a regular contributor at the online bodybuilding forum, Bodybuilding.com. Cached copies of some of Rodger’s now-deleted posts show more of his bitterness towards women as well as men he saw as undeserving of them.
Rodger, who, according to his blog considered himself “Eurasian” – his father is white and his mother is Asian – also complained that minority men were having more success with women than him.
“Seriously, today at my college I saw this short, ugly Indian guy driving a Honda civic, and he had a hot blonde girl in his passenger seat. What on earth is up with that?!?!?” he wrote on May 18, according to cached copies of Bodybuilding.com.
Rodger frequented another web forum called PUAHate.com. The forum, which according to the Daily Mail, describes itself as the “Anti-PickUp-Artist-Movement”, went offline on Saturday.
Rodger posted a number of other videos on Youtube. He had re-uploaded a number of the videos after he said he was forced by his parents to take them down. The disturbing nature of the videos even prompted a visit from police several weeks ago, according to the Daily Mail.
In one, titled “Why do girls hate me so much?”, he is seen standing by the roadside. He complains “I don’t know why you girls are so repulsed by me.”
“I’m polite. I’m the ultimate gentleman,” he said.