Shooting rampage at my alma mater, UCSB. 7 dead. Horrifying.

Parents Forum
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<p>I found this article interesting:
<a href=“In Isla Vista, red flags came too late”>In Isla Vista, red flags came too late;

<p>Apparently his parents and others who knew him knew that he was “terribly sad.” And perhaps, as one psychiatrist said, he was in “pre-psychosis,” though to me that sounds like a retrospective diagnosis rather than something that could be diagnosed in real time. But whether he was depressed, or about to be psychotic, or both those things, I’m dubious that travel would help. Travel is not a cure for mental illness.</p>

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<p>^ ^</p>

<p>Agree with Cardinal Fang here.</p>

<p>Especially considering he’s likely to find he’s just as, if not more less accepted for his “odd behavior” and his exhibited sense of entitlement. </p>

<p>He may also find that “not having one’s Asian side show” may work against him in some social contexts in some Asian areas…especially if he’s 5’7" or under. </p>

<p>Also, it seems like there’s more exhibitions of murderous entitlement…albeit attempted:</p>

<p><a href=“http://fox40.com/2014/05/25/3-women-refuse-sex-suspect-fires-gun/”>http://fox40.com/2014/05/25/3-women-refuse-sex-suspect-fires-gun/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I wasn’t suggesting that it was, CF. I just said this:</p>

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<p>My point was, surrounding himself with the very people he resented most–beautiful all-American blond girls and their tall, jockish boyfriends–only served to open and reopen the “wounds” he felt by their rejection. It just seems like SB was probably the worst possible place for him to be. In a different setting he might not have been so acutely aware of what he saw as the reasons he was repeatedly spurned.</p>

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<p>If he had the level of self loathing he seems to have had based on his height and ethnicity, there would be nowhere he would not run into reminders of all these supposed beautiful , "jockish " people. Popular , good looking, athletic people are everywhere. My sons are both very tall and blondish, blue eyed… Both have good friends that are much shorter and Asian . Their friends are successful and well adjusted from what I can tell. They will be sharing a townhouse soon with one of older son’s frat brothers, whose family was originally from Viet Nam. This killer is an outlier who was unfortunately mentally ill and was not stopped before he could wreak this kind of havoc. So tragic for all involved.</p>

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<p>I agree with you, sally. SB of all places for him to be in…It’s like you know you have cuts on your hands but still choose to put Purel on them. </p>

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<p>There are beautiful people everywhere, “alpha males” that he wanted to be are everywhere. Sure, there are higher concentrations in some places and he could have found less of them in another location but the geographic cure was not going to help this guy.</p>

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<p>No is saying a change of scenery was going to cure him, but his location and environment did nothing to help him. </p>

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<p>How would it have been different in New York or LA or anywhere else? There are beautiful people everywhere. It’s a fact of life. He seems to have been mentally ill, resentful, narcissistic and grandiose. I think he would have found reasons to feel wounded wherever he was. </p>

<p>It MAY have helped if he had stayed closer to his family who could have monitored him more closely but even that is no guarantee.</p>

<p>So sorry to hear everything you have been through, MaineLonghorn. You have always been very helpful in sharing your experiences. All the best to you and your family.</p>

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I fully agree that it is very important for parents to know their child. It is better to err on the side of too much, rather than too little. But if the parents try to probe too much, their child may rebel againt them and there are no lack of other “outsiders” (esp. on CC) who may be quick to label such parents as “helicopter parents.” It is not easy to be not too nosy but barely nosy enough to know what the parents should know, in order to offer some just-in-time help if needed.</p>

<p>BTW, I am very aware of the IV area next to UCSB. It is really not a “healthy” environment for him to live in if he’s in such a terrible mental condition. But I am a Monday Quaterback to say this.</p>

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<p>The environs of UC Irvine might have been a better choice. UCI has a very high ratio of Asian students (more than 50% I think, while UCSB has one of the lowest ratios of Asians students). He might have found more success with the ladies at UCI, at least in the “physical” department (not saying they would be attracted to an oddball). Looking at his photos, “metrosexual” came to mind. I am not totally familiar with the dominant vibe at UCSB nowadays, but the stereotype is beachy blondes. Girls going to UCSB expecting to find beachy guys would not be looking for a metrosexual type like Rodger.</p>

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<p>Agree and I doubt any college hotspot was a “healthy” environment for anybody in his precarious mental state to be living in. </p>

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<p>My BIL is Asian. He attended a HS where there were only 4 Asian kids in a student body of 1200. He moved to the Bay Area after college and is happy to be in a community where he is not a racial outlier. He says he will never put his kids in the miserable racial situation he was subjected to. </p>

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<p>That’s probably right. And of course it’s all speculation and “if only…” at this time.</p>

<p>I do think both LA and NY attract a disproportionate number of people focused on appearances (Miami, too). I am not AT ALL saying he would have been able to have an actual relationship somewhere else. But he wanted to be attractive to classic all-American blond sorority girls, which to some degree is still the Hollywood ideal. My point in bringing up the town he lived in was only that–that he was constantly reminded of how “other” he was even though he managed to have expensive clothes and a car in the 90% percentile of status or whatever it was he says his BMW was.</p>

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<p>One of the things that has bothered me so far in the news coverage of this seems to be the assumption that this young man was mentally ill. We don’t have any evidence of that. It’s very possible that he was - he does seem to evidence some symptoms, and his behavior on the video is reportedly erratic. But it’s also possible that he was not. He was seeing therapists, but plenty of people see therapists without having a diagnosed or undiagnosed mental illness. And indeed, many people do hurt and kill kill other people based upon their feelings without being mentally ill (a question raised on the first page). Not all murderers, serial killers, or violent criminals are mentally ill.</p>

<p>One reason it bothers me is because I often see it leading to the thinking that mentally ill people are dangerous and therefore need to be denied rights that others have (not the right to own guns, I mean - more like a right to privacy and self-determination. I’ve seen people - both after this and the Newtown shooting - suggest that mentally ill people should be institutionalized or monitored). In truth, most mentally ill people (even those who are not taking medication) are not dangerous and are actually more likely to be the victims of violent crime than the perpetrators. Most mental illnesses do not raise violent behavior; the few that do are pretty rare in the general population.</p>

<p>Also, I’ve never been to Santa Barbara (or California, for that matter) but I am kind of skeptical of the idea that there are more beautiful people there than anywhere else. Regardless of whether he really is mentally ill or not, this young man had a vendetta. He was angry, and when you have a vendetta like that you see what you want to see. I mean, he was foolish enough to connect his sexual denial to a sorority full of young women who didn’t know him and had never interacted with him, simply because he perceived them to be mostly blonde and beautiful. He could’ve been living in the middle of Fargo or Topeka and still had the same thing happen - because it was his thought patterns that were to blame.</p>

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<p>Does anyone know if he had a job in past year? If he wasn’t going to classes, what was he doing with his time?</p>

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<p>Read the manifesto. He’s clearly mentally ill, without a doubt.</p>

<p>All this speculation is silly. He was jealous of couples showing affection and would have had that reaction no matter where he lived. </p>

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<p>But there are plenty of Asian people in LA and NY, aren’t there, GMT? One of my kid’s best friends in HS was Korean. He and his brother were the only Korean kids in the public high school (the parents were from Korea-the dad was an engineering professor). The public school was predominantly African American and white with a few other Asian kids. My kid took a trip to LA with his friend and stayed with his extended family, visited Koreatown. I get it (but of course can never get it fully), it is not easy to be in the minority but most minorities of any type just are not doing these types of things. There is more going on here.</p>

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<p>It’s not entirely that SB has a dense concentration of genuinely beautiful people, but rather the worth that is placed on looks. Santa Barbara, Hollywood, New York, Miami…Looks are the money. </p>

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<p>@julliet, the kid was in therapy since he was 8 years old</p>

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<p>Regarding the travel, information the parents gave the police, and the SB location, </p>

<p>1) they tried travel. He went to London each of the last two years before this one when he broke his leg. Prior to that they tried to make him go with his step mother to her home country for an extended period but when he was hyper upset for a period of time they brought him back. </p>

<p>2) He lied to his parents as he did to the police. He told them, for example, that he had been bullied and pushed off a 10 foot ledge when he tried to go to a party, and that was how he broke his leg. The family attorney statement reflected this, since the attorney said he was bullied even broke his leg because he was pushed off a 10 foot ledge. However, if you read his manifesto he describes the situation. He got drunk then ‘gave humanity one last chance’ (to give him sex) by forcing his way into a private party on Del Playa drive. No one approached him so he climbed up on the ten foot ledge (used as a balcony - it had chairs) and sat there shooting people with his finger as a gun. Some students, male and female later went up there and continued socializing with each other, not approaching him. So he started insulting them. Then he tried to push the women in particular off the ledge and shouted that he was going to kill them, and he got thrown off himself. He broke his ankle, but came back (going to the wrong house but the next door house which obviously had been alerted to him, per his account) and demanded his gucci sunglasses which he had lost somewhere along the way. He doesn’t detail what he said at that time, only that he was beat up. He says some people helped him ‘but only to the end of DP’ then left him. [ a student in an interview said he had tried to comfort the guy when he had been in a fight but was shouted out. If this was that occasion, it might explain why someone ‘left him’. ] He wrote in his manifesto that he had given women and humanity a last chance, but they had rejected him. He stated that if one woman had wanted to have sex with him she would have helped him home then would have offered to go to bed with him to make him feel better. I am only pointing out here that the ‘reality’ of his leg being broken - still only through his own self agrandized reporting, was very different from what he told the police (that they attacked him) and apparently told his parents. I sincerely doubt he told them he had bought guns, since he bought them specifically for his ‘Day of Retribution’.</p>

<p>3) I agree Santa Barbara was in a sense the worst place for him, although my reasons include how unprepared Santa Barbara is for something like this, given its extremely low crime rate, and very friendly inhabitants. But they are pretty famous for being that friendly and I can imagine a desperate parent thinking nowhere would be an easier place to make friends - but for the being an angry psychopath part. He had already tried and failed at Pierce College in the San Fernando Valley and at Moorpark College in Ventura. His parents chose this, I am sure BECAUSE it had the beachy blonds who attracted him - he didn’t want any other kind, he said he wasn’t attracted to them and basically they might as well not have existed.</p>

<p>as for UCI, he couldn’t have gotten in, any more than into UCSB. He was and had been dropping out of Community College, that is no recommendation for UCs. However, he was incredibly racist. He didn’t want Asians and certainly refused to consider himself one. One of the things that set him off at the DP party was an Asian student being spoken to by ‘beautiful blondes’ when instead they should have been speaking to him. He was extremely derogatory towards Asians, blacks and Mexicans. </p>