GUNMAN HAD HISTORY OF MENTAL ILLNESS
The man who killed two people and wounded nine others at a movie theatre was so mentally ill and violent that years ago, his wife hid his guns and his family had him hospitalized against his will before obtaining a court order to keep him away.
Thursday, 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 Friday 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.
She told her father 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.”
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 theatre and heard a single shot before finding him dead.
Houser parked his 1995 blue Lincoln Continental by the theatre’s exit door, and disguises including glasses and wigs were found in a search of his room at a nearby Motel 6. The licence 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.
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, Ga.
Houser, who was known by the nickname Rusty, also espoused other radical views, including his opposition to women in the workplace.
Floyd described Houser as an “angry man” who made “wild accusations” about all sorts of topics, and said he put him on to counter a Democratic voice because “he could make the phones ring.”
Houser owned a bar called Rusty’s Buckhead Pub, but his liquor licence was revoked in 2001 for serving minors. To protest, he put up a banner with a swastika encircled by the words Welcome to LaGrange, according to a story in the LaGrange Daily News.
The two fatalities were identified as Mayci Breaux, 21, and Jillian Johnson, 33.
Breaux was a radiology student at a nearby college. Johnson ran clothing and art boutiques, played in a rock band and planted fruit trees in her neighbourhood for the homeless and her neighbours.
Stories of heroism emerged. A teacher jumped in front of her colleague, taking a bullet for her, and the second teacher pulled a fire alarm to alert other moviegoers, said Gov. Bobby Jindal, who travelled to the scene.
“Her friend literally jumped over her and, by her account, actually saved her life,” Jindal said.
Houser studied accounting in Georgia and earned a law degree at Faulkner University in Alabama.
There’s no record he became a lawyer in either state.
He “has a history of mental health issues, i.e., manic depression and/or bi-polar dis- order,” his family said in court documents in 2008, when he made violent threats in an effort to stop his daughter’s wedding. A judge granted the family’s petition to have him involuntarily committed to a hospital as “a danger to himself and others.”
Houser refused to back down after getting out, however, so his wife, daughter and other relatives also obtained a protective order after accusing him of having “perpetrated various acts of family violence.”
Houser’s wife, Kellie, filed for divorce in March. She said they were married in 1983, but separated in 2012 and lived apart ever since.
Police weren’t sure why Houser ended up in Louisiana years after becoming estranged from family in Alabama and Georgia.
There were about 300 people in the theatre building at the time of the shooting and 25 people in Trainwreck.
Trainwreck star Amy Schumer tweeted: “My heart is broken and all my thoughts and prayers are with everyone in Louisiana.”
An ‘angry man’ who made ‘wild accusations’ about all sorts of topics