Louisiana Theater Gunman Bought Gun Legally At Pawnshop

This undated photo provided by the Lafayette Police Department shows John Russel Houser, in Lafayette, La. Authorities have identified Houser as the gunman who opened fire in a movie theater on Thursday, July 23, 201... This undated photo provided by the Lafayette Police Department shows John Russel Houser, in Lafayette, La. Authorities have identified Houser as the gunman who opened fire in a movie theater on Thursday, July 23, 2015, in Lafayette. (Lafayette Police Department via AP) MORE LESS
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LAFAYETTE, La. (AP) — A man who lost his family, home and businesses as he spent years angrily espousing right-wing extremism on television, the Internet and to anyone else who would listen did not say a word as he opened fire on strangers in a darkened movie theater, authorities said Friday.

John Russell Houser, 59, stood up about 20 minutes into Thursday night’s showing of “Trainwreck” and fired on the audience, killing two people and wounding nine with a semi-automatic handgun.

“That was a horrific scene in there — the blood on the floor, sticks in the seats (showing the trajectory of the bullets), the smell,” state police Col. Michael Edmonson said after top officials got an inside look at the theater.

“He took his time, methodically choosing his victims,” Gov. Bobby Jindal added. “One of the surviving wounded victims actually played dead to stay alive.”

Houser then tried to escape by blending into the fleeing crowd after one of his victims pulled a fire alarm and hundreds poured out of the theater complex. But he turned back as police officers approached, reloading and firing into the crowd before killing himself with a single shot inside the theater, police said.

“This is such a senseless, tragic action,” Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft said. “Why would you come here and do something like this?”

Investigators recovered Houser’s journals, were studying his online postings and trying to reconstruct his movements to identify a motive and provide what Edmonson called “some closure” for the victims’ families.

Craft said Houser bought the weapon legally at a pawnshop in Phenix City, Alabama, last year, and that he had visited the theatermore than once, perhaps to determine “whether there was anything that could be a soft target for him.”

He had only been in Louisiana since early July, staying in a Motel 6 room littered with wigs and disguises. His only known connection to the Lafayette was an uncle who died there three decades ago.

Details quickly emerged about Houser’s mental problems, prompting authorities in Louisiana and Alabama to bemoan the underfunding of mental health services in America.

Court records describe erratic behavior and threats of violence that led to a brief involuntary hospitalization in 2008 and a restraining order preventing Houser from approaching family members. Houser “has a history of mental health issues, i.e., manic depression and/or bi-polar disorder,” his estranged wife told the judge.

Educated in accounting and law, he owned bars in Georgia — including one where he flew a Nazi banner out front as an anti-government statement. He tried real estate in Phenix City, Alabama. But Houser’s own resume, posted online, says what he really loved to do was make provocative statements at local board meetings and in the media.

On an NBC television affiliate’s call-in show in the 1990s, Houser encouraged violent responses to abortion and condemned working women, host Calvin Floyd recalled. He was an “angry man” who spoke opposite a Democrat and really lit up the phones, he added.

Houser wrote that he was a weekly guest for 60 episodes on “Rise and Shine WLTZ” in Columbus, Georgia, where he “invited political controversy on every one of them, and loved every minute of it.”

In recent years, Houser turned to right-wing extremist Internet message boards, where he praised Adolf Hitler, and advised people not to underestimate “the power of the lone wolf,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose hate-group watchdogs spotted Houser registering to meet with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke in 2005.

What prompted Houser to kill people Thursday night remains unknown.

He seemed like just another patron as he entered The Grand 16 theater, one of 25 people who bought tickets to the romantic comedy starring feminist jokester Amy Schumer as a boozing, promiscuous reporter.

Police believe he hoped to escape his deadly ambush before police closed in. Inside a Motel 6 room he rented, they found wigs, glasses and other disguises. Houser also swapped the license plates on his 1995 Lincoln Continental before parking it by thetheater’s exit door. He stashed the keys atop one of its wheels.

Once inside, he sat by himself and gave others in the theater no reason for concern before he began shooting, firing first at two women who were sitting in front of him, then wounding nine other people.

Twenty-one year old Emily Mann and a friend, who arrived a little bit late to the movie, were sitting in the same row as the gunman, and saw the flashes from his gun barrel.

“About twenty minutes into the movie, you hear one loud shot and you’re sure that’s not what it is because it would never be that. And then you hear another and another and another and you realize that those aren’t just lights and sounds. That this is a man,” Mann said.

As the chaos ensued she said she got down on her hands and knees and tried to make her way to the lobby.

“Lost a shoe, left my purse,” she said.

Once outside the theater she ran to the lobby where people were yelling there was a shooter. She later found her friend outside the theater and drove home.

Jeanerette High School English teacher Ali Martin and librarian Jena Meaux were credited with helping save lives amid the chaos. Meaux, who was shot in the leg, told her colleagues that Martin, who was shot in the kneecap, still managed to pull a fire alarm, their former principal Heath Hulin said.

The lights came as the siren sounded, with a message urging everyone to leave. Outside, a woman was laying down, shot in her leg, said Jacob Broussard, who heard the gunshots from another theater across the hall.

“She was bleeding on the grass, in the front of the theater,” Broussard said. “A man had actually dragged her out.”

Theatergoers didn’t panic, police said, but they left in a rush, leaving behind purses, keys and even shoes. Officers found 15 spent shell casings.

The two women killed were 21-year-old Mayci Breaux and 33-year-old Jillian Johnson. Breaux’s body was brought to the same hospital where she was preparing to become a radiology technician. Johnson ran clothing and art boutiques, played in a rootsy rock band and planted fruit trees for neighbors and the homeless.

The wounded ranged in age from teenagers to their late 60s, Craft said. Five were treated at Lafayette General Health Center. Three patients had been stabilized, including one who remained in intensive care. Two others were released Thursday night.

Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor said his office denied Houser’s request for a concealed weapons permit in 2006 because he had been treated for mental illness and arrested for arson in Georgia.

“He was pretty even-keeled until you disagreed with him or made him mad,” said Jeff Hardin, the former mayor of Phenix City, Alabama, just across the state line from Columbus. “Then he became your sworn enemy.”

Hardin said he once partnered with Houser on a real-estate project, but they had a falling out and hadn’t spoken since around 2007.

Houser was evicted from his home in Phenix City last year, then returned to throw paint, pour concrete down the plumbing and tamper with a gas line, Taylor said.

Houser’s wife filed for divorce in March, saying their differences were irreconcilable and his whereabouts were unknown. His mother recently lent him $5,000, but “It just seems like he was kind of drifting along,” Craft said.

Houser’s only known relative in Lafayette, an uncle, died 35 years ago.

After detailing each victim’s wounds, David Callecod, president of Lafayette General Health, pleaded Friday for society to provide as much funding for mental health services as it does for other medical problems.

Pressed to explain why Houser wasn’t arrested before, Sheriff Taylor also blamed cuts in the safety net.

“There’s cuts being made all over,” Taylor said. “What should be scary for the community is that the cuts being made in mental health around the state are allowing these people, who should not be walking around, to be out in the community.”

___

Associated Press writers Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia; Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama; Ray Henry in Carrollton, Georgia; Kim Chandler in Phenix City, Alabama; Kate Brumback and Kathleen Foody in Atlanta; and Kevin McGill in New Orleans contributed to this report.

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Notable Replies

  1. “There’s cuts being made all over,” Taylor said. “What should be scary for the community is that the cuts being made in mental health around the state are allowing these people, who should not be walking around, to be out in the community.”

    Another legacy of the Gipper!

  2. What we can learn from this and other shootings:

    • Background checks only work if the system supporting the checks is working, which is often not the case as proved in the last two mass shootings, where mentally unstable and people with a record have legally acquired weapons in spite of the many existing laws. I say fix first the laws we have.
    • Gun free zones kill people, many people, and that’s a fact. Contrary to many people believes, gunmen like Hauser do not just shoot randomly in the group of fleeing victims but pick them out methodically, as the Police has found out.
    • Reduced capacity ammunition magazines do not change a thing in a mass shooting episode. Charleston church shooter had 8 magazines with a maximum capacity of 10 shots and used every single one, methodically reloading without anybody being able to stop him. Jumping a shooter while he reloads is just a very dangerous fantasy that only works in the mind of those who have seen too many Hollywood movies.
    • Prohibiting entrance to gun free zones to concealed carry permit holders – who are people with zero mental, medical and criminal records; have submitted fingerprints; passed extended background checks; participated to a mandatory gun safety and gun laws course; proved their marksmanship and safe gun handling at a range under supervision – is proving a deadly and costly proposition. We need to change that attitude and allow people who chose to conceal carry to do so freely anywhere entrance isn’t restricted by a security checkpoint.
    • People with known mental health issues keep killing us and all we hear is “more background checks”, “gun shows loopholes”. That I’m aware of, all the guns used in mass killings were purchased legally at places other than gun shows, and were purchased after passing NICS background checks. Don’t ask for more laws, fix existing laws first, fix the system that allows this to happen first.
  3. Details quickly emerged about Houser’s mental problems, prompting authorities in Louisiana and Alabama to bemoan the underfunding of mental health services in America.

    and this…

    Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor said his office denied Houser’s request for a concealed weapons permit in 2006 because he had been treated for mental illness and arrested for arson in Georgia.

    But he still managed to purchase a gun. Legally.

    If the f’ing NRA would get outta the way I’m sure there are enough adults in congress to craft and pass legislation that both protects the rights of good people with their guns while making it much more difficult for people of questionable integrity to acquire them.

    What? You say that they’ll find a way to get their hands on a gun regardless?

    Sad but true.

    So the only solution, and a solution that will take many many years to show the desired result is to ban all handguns and mandate draconian penalties for possessing one. Do the same for semi-automatic rifles. If a hunter is not a good enough shot to bring down that murderous deer with a bolt action rifle then she/he either needs to more practice or stop hunting.

    If such laws had been enacted in say 1985 then we would not be reading about shit like this on an almost daily basis in 2015.

    Should this happen then I want some means of knowing that there are people with concealed weapons on site. A flashing red light would do. Then I could comfortably take my family somewhere else. I’ve been in an environment where everyone was armed and I have no desire to re-live my Vietnam experience here at home.

  4. Beej beej beej…Guns free zones don’t kills peoplez. People with gunz kills peoplez.

    Gun free zones = Free gunz zones in beejland.

  5. Another legacy of smaller government. Send the bill to Grover Norquist, Washington, D.C.

    If you want more or better services, you are going to have to pay for them through taxes. Any politician in LA or AL going to argue for that?

    Listening…

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