BAN WEAPONS OF WAR
Ohio gunman kills 9 within hrs. of Tex. carnage
In a horrifying 13-hour span, the United States suffered two mass shootings that saw 29 innocent lives cut short and 53 people wounded.
Just hours after a shooter slaughtered 20 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, a masked gunman unleashed hell outside a strip of bars early Sunday in Dayton, Ohio, murdering nine people — including his own sister.
Clad in body armor and wearing ear protection as though at a gun range, Connor Betts, 24, opened fire on the city’s hopping Oregon District, picking off fleeing revelers with an AR-15-style rifle as he wended his way to the doors of a bar called Ned Peppers, according to officials.
Within 30 seconds of firing his first shot at 1:05 a.m., a half-dozen Dayton cops had gunned down the killer as he tried to push inside the watering hole — saving untold lives, authorities said.
“It was crucial,” said Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl. “Had this individual made it through the doorway of Ned Peppers with that level of weaponry, there would’ve been catastrophic injury and loss of life.”
Still, nine people were killed and another 27 injured in that brief span of time, officials said.
Federal and local investigators said on Sunday that they were not immediately able to identify a motive even as they pieced together a timeline of the carnage.
What authorities do know is that Betts, his 22-year-old sister, Megan, and a mutual acquaintance traveled to downtown Dayton together that night, parking a 2007 Toyota Corolla registered to the siblings’ father in a lot near the strip, according to Biehl.
At some point in the evening, Connor Betts split from the other two, grabbed his .223-caliber rifle, crept down an alley onto crowded East Fifth Street and opened fire, cops said.
He killed the first of his victims near a tattoo parlor on the south side of the street and kept going — squeezing off dozens of shots from his rifle, which was equipped with a double-drum magazine capable of holding 100 rounds.
“The screams, the [police] cruisers, the chaos,” Nikita Pappillion told Cincinnati NBC affiliate WLWT, recalling the scene that greeted her as she emerged from another bar along the strip in the aftermath. “When you came outside . . . you see the bodies and you knew that this was different.”
The alleged shooter’s sister Megan Betts was among the nine people killed, and the siblings’ male pal was among the wounded — but authorities said on Sunday that it was too early to tell whether they were targeted.
“It’s a nagging question, and I just don’t have an answer,” Biehl said, adding of the siblings’ family, “This is a nightmare for them.”
Investigators have spoken with both the wounded acquaintance and the siblings’ parents, according to Biehl — and have searched the Betts family home in Bellbrook, about 15 miles southeast of Dayton.
Betts had no criminal history, but former classmates recalled on Sunday that he had a troubled past. One former fellow student at Betts’ old high school, Bellbrook HS, told the Dayton Daily News that he was once suspended for writing a “hit
list” on a bathroom wall.
“I know he made the list,” she said. “He had a plan to shoot up the school.”
Another schoolmate, Demoy Howell, told the paper that Betts was “an oddball” who didn’t seem to have many friends.
Howell said they were in Junior ROTC together and later worked together at a fast-food outlet.
“Even though we all knew he was kind of weird, I felt like the colonels kind of kept him together,” Howell said, recalling their time in the military program.
Betts was formerly enrolled at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, studying psychology, according to a college spokesperson.
His AR-15-style rifle was legally purchased, as was another shotgun recovered inside the Toyota, according to Biehl. The doubledrum magazine was also in compliance with the law, Biehl said.
Both guns were picked up by Betts at separate area dealers, with the rifle bought online from Texas, Biehl added.
About 13 hours before the Betts’ massacre, Patrick Crusius, 21, used an AK-47-style rifle to slaughter back-to-school shoppers crowding a Walmart in El Paso. Crusius was captured alive after killing 20 people and wounding 26 more.