Student's Disturbing Video And Mass Shooting 'Appear Connected': Police

Student's Disturbing Video And Mass Shooting 'Appear Connected': Cops

California police are investigating evidence connecting a 22-year-old student to the mass shooting that killed seven people, including the shooter, near the University of Santa Barbara campus Friday.

The suspect has not been publicly named pending notification of family. However, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said that written and video material left by Santa Barbara City College student Elliot Rodger prior to the massacre is being reviewed as evidence.

“It appears to be connected,” Brown said, according to the Santa Barbara Independent.

A disturbing video entitled “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution” was posted to YouTube the day before the shooting. In it, a young man who identifies himself as Elliot Rodger describes his plans to launch an assault targeting women at a sorority house as payback for his life of “loneliness, rejection, and unfulfilled desires.”

"I will slaughter every stuck up, blonde slut I see inside there ... You will finally see that I am in truth the superior one, the true alpha male," the young man says in the video. He then describes how he plans to "take to the streets of Isla Vista and slay every single person."

Loneliness and envy factor heavily in other videos that appear to have been uploaded by Rodger. In one posted May 23, he films a couple at the beach from afar.

"I hate them," he says at one point.

The rampage broke out around 9:30 p.m. Friday in a student enclave with a reputation for parties. Police told the Associated Press that shootings occurred at several sites, resulting in nine crime scenes.

Brown called the suspect "severely mentally disturbed," saying, "This was a premeditated mass murder," according to KEYT-TV.

A witnesses told the station he saw shots fired from a BMW, fatally striking one woman and critically injuring another woman.

A semi-automatic handgun was recovered from the vehicle after it crashed into a parked car following two shootouts with police. The alleged shooter was found dead from a gun shot wound to the head.

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