USA Massacre: The Shooter’s Motives Remain Mysterious

The motives of the shooter who shot nine people on a college campus in the western United States on Thursday remained mysterious, but the minimal descriptions we have display him as a man of few words.

The police surveyed “door to door in the neighborhoods near the college and the shooter’s apartment seeking clues,” the local county sheriff declared Friday morning. “They went to the shooter’s house. It’s really too early to tell what the motive was,” he continued on CNN.

The sheriff refuses to release the name of the shooter, who died during an exchange of gunfire with police at the scene. According to the media, the shooter was Chris Harper Mercer, a young, 26-year-old man. Interrogated by journalists about whether the shooter had been killed by the police because he was “armed to the teeth” and had shot at the officials, the sheriff responded “that is correct.”

The sheriff did not confirm the accounts reporting that the shooter demanded the students tell him whether they were Christians before he shot them one by one in their classrooms. The police prohibited access to the shooter’s reported apartment with yellow security tape. Mary Moore, a 57-year-old nurse’s aide, lives in the apartment just above Chris Harper Mercer’s apartment. She revealed feeling “upset, shocked” at the thought of living alongside the killer.* Other neighbors described Harper Mercer to The New York Times as being an anxious and laconic young man who lived with his mother. Military boots, military-style pants, and a white t-shirt, he wore these in the same fashion every day, they reported to The New York Times. “He was not a friendly type of guy. He did not want anything to do with anyone,” declared one of the neighbors, Brote Hart.

*Editor’s note: These comments, although accurately translated, could not be independently verified.