Elliot Rodger’s brutal massacre at a college party last week was the culmination of a deep hatred and resentment the young student held toward women.
Following the gruesome shootings in which six people were killed and 13 more injured, it has come to light that, although by far the worst, this is not the first physical attack Elliot Rodger carried out in recent years.
On his 22nd birthday, late in July 2013, Rodger decided to go party with the very students he claimed to hate. He notes in his manifesto, which he published just before carrying out his attack, that on his 22nd birthday:
I was giving the female gender one last chance to provide me with the pleasures I deserved from them
On that night Rodger bought some vodka, which he downed to build his confidence, and entered a house party. As nobody was talking to him, Rodger became frustrated and just before leaving the party he confronted a couple.
In his manifesto he wrote: “realizing how pathetic I looked all by myself when everyone was partying around me.”
He then climbed onto a wooden ledge and sat on a chair. When other partygoers joined him on that platform Elliot Rodger tried to push them off of the 10-foot ledge.
When he wasn’t strong enough to achieve his goal, he got pushed back and ended up falling from the platform himself and breaking his ankle when he hit the street below.
To make matters worse, he noticed that he had lost his beloved Gucci sunglasses and turned back to find them, but became confused and lost his way ending up walking into a nearby front yard.
When there he asked people where his sunglasses were and they called him names and mocked him, a fist fight ensued. By the time he had staggered home Rodger was bloody, beaten and even more frustrated with the world than before.
Rodger’s issues had already been quite bad the year before, when he said he felt very jealous while watching “a group of popular college kids” at a park.
He decided that he was going to ruin their fun and drove to a nearby K-mart, bought a super-soaker and filled it with orange juice . He then returned to the park and squirted the juice at the kids:
“I screamed at them with rage as I sprayed them with my super soaker … I was giddy with ecstatic, hate-fueled excitement,” he wrote in his manifesto.
And a year prior to that he mentions an incident which took place at a Starbucks. He said he saw a young couple kissing while they stood in line:
When they left the store I followed them to their car and splashed my coffee all over them. I was panicking as I got into my car and drove off, shaking with rage-fueled excitement.
As these prior attacks by Elliot Rodger , albeit disturbing, were relatively minor in nature and not of any real interest to the police, and they were never followed them up.
The fact that filling a super-soaker with juice morphed into a bloody massacre a few years later with a real firearm is tragic, as the families of the victims and the killer try to put the pieces together and come to terms with this horrific massacre.
