Killer dressed in black shot his own sister
THE gunman who killed revellers as they queued to enter a bar also murdered his sister, it emerged last night.
Connor Betts, 24, murdered nine in his killing spree in Dayton, Ohio – the second mass shooting in the US in less than 24 hours. Among the dead was his 22-yearold sister Megan, a university student.
There were unconfirmed reports that her body was found in a car alongside her wounded boyfriend.
One of Betts’s other victims, Lois Oglesby, 27, was studying to be a nurse and had a newborn baby, it emerged.
Police last night said Betts drove to the scene on Sunday in a silver Toyota with his sister and one other person.
At some point the siblings separated before the shootings started.
Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl said Betts had a ‘minimal criminal history’ which included traffic offences. Asked about the gunman’s motive, he said: ‘Everyone wants to know why. We do not have that answer at this time...’ The killer had ordered a gun online from Texas and also owned a shotgun he had bought from a local shop.
Police are still trawling Betts’ online posts and phone content and are said to have found notes written by him that showed an interest in killing people.
The notes, which were found during a search of his family home in Bellbrook, Ohio, did not indicate a political or racial motive, the sources said. It also emerged that Betts had reportedly been suspended from school for once writing a ‘hit list’ on a bathroom wall.
An unnamed woman who went to school with the killer said: ‘I know he made the list,’ adding: ‘I’m not sure who the names were on there... He had a plan to shoot up the school.’
Betts had worked at a petrol station and Mexican fast food chain Chipotle, according to his LinkedIn page. Witnesses told how they saw him in body armour and a mask firing a 223-calibre assault rifle as revellers queued for the Ned Peppers bar in a lively area of the city centre. Witness Holly Redman, 31, told The New York Times there were bodies ‘everywhere you looked’. ‘It was like World War II. I just started crying and looking at all these people. That could have been us,’ she said.
Another unnamed witness said: ‘The screams, the chaos... the security guards were running around telling people to get out, and just from how everybody was acting, you knew something was wrong.’ Within a minute, Betts had been shot dead by police.
Former classmate Brad Howard said: ‘The Connor Betts that I knew was a nice kid.’ But others told a different story. A former boy scout, Betts had reportedly been ‘in trouble before’. Other classmates said they were ‘ not surprised’ he was behind the massacre.
Miss Betts was studying environmental science at Wright State University and was due to graduate next year.
One former schoolfriend last night described her as a ‘sweetheart’ who was ‘very funny’.
‘It was like World War II’