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 John R. Houser, who bore a volatile relationship with family and
railed against the U.S. government online, opened fire on Thursday
with a .40 caliber handgun about 20 minutes into the comedy film
"Trainwreck," sending panicked theatergoers ducking behind seats and
running for the exits. One woman pulled the fire alarm.
"This is a normal movie theater in a normal part of a normal town.
This is Anywhere, USA," said Republican Governor Bobby Jindal, a
presidential contender who went to the crime scene in Lafayette.
"This just shows these senseless acts of violence can literally
happen anywhere."
Houser bought the gun legally from a pawnshop in Alabama in 2014,
police said, despite a history of mental illness and having been
denied a concealed-carry permit seven years earlier because of a
domestic violence complaint and a prior arson arrest.
Police said Houser acted alone and appeared to have carefully
planned his attack in advance with hopes of making a quick getaway.
Before buying a ticket for the 7 p.m. show, Houser parked his blue
Lincoln Continental near the theater's emergency exit. He had
switched its license plates and stashed the keys on top of a tire.
Disguises including glasses and women's wigs were later uncovered in
a local motel room where he was staying.
 "It is apparent that he was intent on shooting and escaping," said
Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft, who described Houser as an
unemployed "drifter" from Phenix City, Alabama.
Houser never made it back to his car. As police swarmed the Grand 16
Theater, located along a main thoroughfare in Lafayette, he reloaded
his pistol, re-entered the auditorium and fired several more rounds
at the crowd before killing himself, Craft said. In addition to the
gun, he was carrying two 10-round magazines of bullets.
Police said they did not know why the suspect launched the attack in
Lafayette, roughly 55 miles (90 km) southwest of the state capital
Baton Rouge.
THREE YEARS AFTER AURORA
The shooting was the latest in a series of mass killings in the
United States, including the fatal shooting of five U.S. servicemen
in Tennessee, and the massacre of nine African Americans at a South
Carolina church in recent weeks.
The latest act of apparently random gun violence came almost three
years to the day after 12 people were killed at a cinema in Aurora,
Colorado.
It is likely to heat up a festering political debate in the United
States over access to weapons and the right to bear arms, protected
under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
President Barack Obama had told the BBC in an interview aired on
Thursday before the shooting that his biggest frustration was the
failure to pass "common-sense gun safety laws."
Not counting Thursday's incident, a total of 203 mass shootings have
been reported so far this year, according to the Mass Shooting
Tracker website, a crowd-sourced database kept by the anti-gun group
GunsAreCool, which defines a mass shooting as any event in which
four or more people are shot.
Authorities initially said seven people were wounded in the
Lafayette rampage, three of them critically. Craft said later Friday
that five victims remained hospitalized and that four others injured
in the incident had been treated and released.
The two dead were identified as Mayci Breaux, 21, from Franklin,
Louisiana, and Jillian Johnson, 33, from Lafayette. Breaux was about
to begin studies at Lafayette General Hospital to become an x-ray
technician. Johnson owned a Lafayette gift shop.
 Two of the wounded victims were teachers, Jindal said, one of whom
told him that she survived the attack because her friend rolled on
top of her as bullets rang out. That teacher then managed to pull a
fire alarm in the theater, he said.
'VOLATILE MENTAL STATE'
Houser had a history of mental illness, according to police
officials and court records. A political conservative who joined the
Tea Party, Houser was described as a "gadfly" who voiced his views
on talk radio and ran for local political office.
In April 2008, he was ordered not to contact his wife, daughter and
other relatives after they filed a request for a protective order
against him in Carroll County, Georgia.
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In the request, Houser’s estranged wife, Kellie Houser, said she
feared for his “volatile mental state” after he threatened to stop
the wedding of his daughter and her boyfriend, according to court
records. She said her husband was on daily medications for
manic-depression and bipolar disorder at the time.
Earlier, Houser was involuntarily committed to a hospital for
psychiatric care, according to court documents. His family was
concerned he could be a danger to himself and others, according to
the petition.
Houser's wife filed for divorce in March after they separated in
2012 following 29 years of marriage, court records show. According
to the clerk of court's office, the divorce had not been finalized.
Houser applied for and was denied a concealed carry-permit in
Russell County, Alabama, in 2006 because of a domestic violence
complaint filed against him by his wife in 2005 and an arson arrest
dating back to 1989 or 1990, Sheriff Heath Taylor told reporters. He
said Houser was known to have undergone treatment for an unspecified
mental illness while in Alabama in 2008 and 2009.
In 2014, Houser was accused of vandalizing a home from which he had
been evicted after a foreclosure but was not arrested in connection
with that incident, the sheriff said.
A LinkedIn page that appears to have belonged to Houser describes
him as an entrepreneur with a specialty in investment management. He
helped run two bars in Georgia from the late 1970s to 2000, the page
says. His education included a law degree from Faulkner University,
a Christian school in Montgomery, Alabama. The page also listed an
undergraduate degree in accounting from Columbus State University in
Georgia.
Craft, the police chief, said Houser had been discussing "with a
couple of businessmen" in town the idea of opening a two-minute
automotive oil change service.
Houser was a member of the conservative Tea Party, according to Tea
Party Nation.com, and he was a guest host on a now-defunct political
commentary show.
A frequent commenter on PoliticalForum.com, a messaging board
covering social and political topics, Houser wrote about 200 posts
on President Obama, taxes and how "the U.S. is about to fall," using
the name Rusty Houser.
In response to a thread in May 2013 about the fall of the United
States, Houser wrote: "Truth carries with it an understanding of
death. Rather than live without it, I will take death."
Houser also expressed an affinity for white supremacist and neo-Nazi
ideology and wrote about the "power of the lone wolf," according to
online activity cited by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the
SITE Intelligence Group, which monitor extremist groups.
Bobby Peters, a former mayor of Columbus, Georgia, said Houser was a
local activist who came to council meetings and had hosted a talk
show where he interviewed elected officials. Columbus is across the
state line from Phenix City, Alabama.
“I'm not going to say that he gave any signs that he was going to do
some kind of act like this. Not at all. He was just very erratic,”
Peters said.
(Additional reporting by Phil McCausland in New Orleans; Dan
Whitcomb and Victoria Cavaliere in Los Angeles; Letitia Stein in
Tampa, Florida; Karen Brooks in Austin, Texas; Laila Kearney, Joseph
Ax, Angela Moon and Lena Masri in New York; Writing by David Adams,
Frank McGurty and Steve Gorman; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli, Lisa
Shumaker and Ken Wills)
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