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The man who killed two people and wounded nine others at a movie theater was so mentally ill and violent that years ago, his wife hid his guns and his family had him hospitalised against his will before obtaining a court order to keep him away.
John Russell Houser, 59, stood up about 20 minutes into the "Trainwreck" movie and fired first at two people sitting in front of him, then aimed his handgun at others. Police said yesterday they found 13 shell casings.
"They heard a couple of pops and didn't know what it was," said Randall Mann, whose 21-year-old daughter, Emily, was sitting in the same row as the shooter Thursday night.
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She told her father that she did not hear the shooter say anything before opening fire. "And then they saw the muzzle flashes, and that's when they knew what was going on. She hit the floor immediately."
Mann said his daughter and her friend escaped, uninjured but traumatised.
Police said Houser had one additional magazine of bullets as he tried to escape. Then, when he spotted police officers outside, he turned around and pushed back through the fleeing crowd. The officers tailed him into the theater and heard a single shot before finding him dead inside.
Houser parked his 1995 blue Lincoln Continental by the theater's exit door, and disguises including glasses and wigs were found in a search of his room at a nearby Motel 6, police said. The license plate on the car had also been switched.
"It is apparent that he was intent on shooting and then escaping," Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft said.
Police were looking at online postings they believed Houser wrote to learn more about him and try to figure out his motive, superintendent Col. Michael D. Edmonson said.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, said it has had Houser's name in its files since 2005, when he registered at former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke's European-American Unity and Rights Organization conference.
In online forums, he wrote of the "power of the lone wolf" and expressed interest in white power groups, anti-Semitic ideas and the Westboro Baptist Church, which has protested at soldiers' funerals, the center said.
"Hitler is loved for the results of his pragmatism," Houser wrote in January on the website stateofmind13.Com.
In the 1990s, he frequently appeared on a local television call-in show, advocating violence against people involved in abortions, said Calvin Floyd, who hosted the morning show on WLTZ-TV in Columbus, Georgia.
