On May 23, 2014, in Isla Vista, California, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen others near the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara, before killing himself inside his vehicle.
The attack began when Rodger stabbed three men to death in his apartment. Afterward, he drove to a sorority house and shot three female students outside, killing two. He drove past a nearby deli and shot to death a male student who was inside. He began to speed through Isla Vista, shooting and wounding several pedestrians and striking several others with his car. Rodger exchanged gunfire with police twice during the attack, receiving a non-fatal gunshot to the hip. The rampage ended when his car crashed into a parked vehicle and came to a stop. Police found him dead in the car with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.
According to his family’s attorney and family friend, Rodger had seen multiple therapists since he was 8 years old and while he was a student at SBCC (Santa Barbara City College). The lawyer said Rodger was “receiving psychiatric treatment,” but Rodger was never formally diagnosed with a mental illness. A psychiatrist had prescribed him antipsychotic medication to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but he refused to take it. According to Rodger’s mother, he was diagnosed as having Asperger syndrome, but a formal medical diagnosis of the disorder was not made. He was in fact diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified, another autism spectrum disorder, in 2007.
By the ninth-grade, Rodger was “increasingly bullied,” and he wrote he “cried by [himself] at school every day.” He also started an obsession with the multiplayer-online game World of Warcraft during this time, with the game dominating his life for a majority of his teenage years, and briefly during his 20s. During his time at Crespi Carmelite High, he was bullied by other students including an incident involving his head getting taped to his desk while he was asleep. According to Rodger, in 2012, “the one friend [he] 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 ending the friendship.
Rodger had a YouTube account and a blog titled “Elliot Rodger’s Official Blog” both of which contained posts expressing loneliness and rejection. He wrote he had been prescribed Risperidone but refused to take it, stating, “After researching this medication, I found that it was the absolute wrong thing for me to take.”
After turning 18, Rodger began rejecting the mental health care his family provided, and he became increasingly isolated. He said he was unable to make friends although acquaintances said he rebuffed their attempts to be friendly.<1>
It turned out while Elliot Rodger was carrying out his deadly rampage around Santa Barbara, his parents were frantically trying to find him, having just received a chilling manifesto from their son.
Rodger, sent a couple dozen people – including his parents and at least one of his therapists – the 140-page document via e-mail not long before the shootings began.
The manifesto was a lengthy chronicle which detailed Rodger’s frustrations about his height, his parents’ divorce, and rejection by women. Rodger’s mother, Lichin, who saw the e-mail at 9:17 p.m. PT, immediately went to Rodger’s YouTube page, where he had been known to post videos about himself. That’s when Rodger’s mother saw her son’s latest video, called “Retribution,” he had posted Friday, the day of the shootings.
In the video, Rodger outlined his plan of “slaughtering” women at a sorority house at the University of California at Santa Barbara. His mother called Rodger’s father, Peter, and she told him to watch the YouTube video. At the time, the mother had read the manifesto but the father had not. Lichin Rodger called 911 and the parents set off for Santa Barbara from Los Angeles. En route, they heard there was a shooting. Later that night they found out their son was behind the violence.<2>
CITED REFERENCES
1. Wikipedia contributors, “2014 Isla Vista killings,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Isla_Vista_killings (accessed April 4, 2019).
2. “California killer’s parents frantically searched for son during shooting”
Pamela Brown. CNN Justice Correspondent: May 27, 2014.
Link: https://www.cnn.com/2014/05/25/justice/ ... index.html (accessed December 9, 2018).
