British son of Hunger Games f ilm-maker kills six in LA because he’s still a virgin at 22
A BRITISH student killed six people in California, hours after posting a terrifying video online in which he vowed to ‘slaughter’ the women who rejected him.
Elliot Rodger, 22, son of an assistant director of the Hunger Games films, gunned down his victims from the wheel of his black BMW near the beach resort of Santa Barbara.
Most of his victims are believed to be female university students, though at least one was said to be a man. Rodger died after crashing his car minutes after the drive-by killings. It is not clear whether he turned his gun on himself or was shot by police.
Born in London to an English father and Malaysian mother, Rodger moved to the United States at the age of five. Speaking from her Kent home, his grandmother, Lois Rodger, told The Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘He was a very disturbed boy.’
His father Peter Rodger said his son had been receiving treatment from ‘multiple therapists’. His lawyer said Elliot had been
He was bullied and had a difficulty making friends
diagnosed as a high-functioning patient with Asperger’s syndrome and had faced bullying and had trouble making friends.
The day before his rampage, the killer recorded a seven-minute YouTube video entitled Elliot Rodger’s Retribution, in which he blamed women for his ‘loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires’.
Staring vacantly into the camera he lamented being a virgin and repeatedly complained that life ‘wasn’t fair’. Then he delivered his chilling warning: ‘If I can’t have you, girls, I will destroy you. You deserve to be annihilated and I will give that to you. I will slaughter every single blonde slut I see.
‘I’ll take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you. You will finally see that I am in truth the superior one.’
Rodger’s video was the last in a sequence of self-pitying messages posted on YouTube describing his sexual frustration.
‘His parents were concerned by the videos and had reported them to police. Officers questioned Rodger but found him ‘polite and kind’.
But one family friend said: ‘He was on the spectrum for autism but was angry and rejected any treat- ment. He was a wild card. He was having violent rows with his father and stepmother.’
Rodger’s shooting spree in the bustling student enclave of Isla Vista, lasted ten minutes from 9.27pm local time in Pardall Road when he pulled up outside the Isla Vista Deli Mart. Although he was targeting women, his first victim was a man, cut down by Rodger’s semi-automatic handgun. Witnesses saw him slumped on the pavement outside the store with a gaping chest wound.
A witness who gave her name as Kayley said: ‘He leaned out and started firing. There were bullets flying everywhere. He was just shooting, shooting, shooting. The girls were screaming. I saw girls fall to the ground.’
Then, cruising the streets ‘at little more than walking pace’, Rodger moved on. He drove into the Embarcadero del Mar, a horseshoe-shaped street. Students packed its bars. As he slid his BMW to a halt, he called out to student Sienna Schwartz, saying: ‘Hey, what up?’
When she turned abruptly away, he began firing. Bullets whizzed past her head. ‘I felt, the wind pass right by my face,’ she said.
After this encounter, he shot at a group of students outside a 7-11 store. ‘I saw one woman go down but then people started pushing other women inside. It all happened so fast,’ said a witness.
He headed south around the loop, shooting another woman who was
Found dead with a bullet
wound to the head
walking along the street, before rounding the bottom curve and driving back up the Embarcadero. Witnesses said he knocked down a cyclist and then opened fire on another two people nearby. Police cornered him at 9.37pm.
Rodger crashed his black BMW into a parked Jeep and was discovered dead inside with a gunshot wound to the head.
Police said: ‘It is not known at this time whether he was killed in the exchange of fire with officers or whether he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.’
At his father’s €1.5 million home in an upmarket suburb of Los Angeles where neighbours include Britney Spears, Justin Bieber and Will Smith, a man in his 50s said: ‘Peter’s not making any statement at this time. The family are in deep shock.’