Elliot Rodger’s father says of killings – we did not see it coming

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/27/elliot-rodger-father-shooting-california

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The father of a British-born gunman who killed six people in

California last month has spoken publicly about the attack for the first

time, saying he had believed there was no way that his son "could hurt a

flea".

Film-maker Peter Rodger, second unit director on The Hunger Games

series of films, spoke of how he continued to be haunted day and night

by the actions of his 22-year-old son, Elliot, who stabbed three

University of California students and shot three others in the 23 May

rampage before killing himself.

"Every night I go to sleep, I wake up and I think of those young men

and young women that have died and are injured and were terrorised and

my son did that," Rodger said in an interview with Barbara Walters on

ABC News's 20/20. "My son caused so much pain and suffering for so many

families."

He added: "When you go to sleep normally, you have a nightmare, you wake up and 'oh, everything's OK.'

"Now, I go to sleep, I might have a nice dream and then I wake up and

slowly the truth of what happened dawns on me, and, you know, that is

that my son was a mass murderer."

He added: "There is no way that I

thought this boy could hurt a flea. What I don't get is … we did not

see this coming, at all. This is the American horror story, or the

world's horror story, is when you have somebody who, on the outside, is

one thing and, on the inside, is something different. And you don't see

it."

In a video that the gunman uploaded to YouTube before embarking on the killing spree, he identified himself as Elliot Rodger and said that he had spent the first five years of his life in Sussex.

He detailed his so-called "day of retribution", stating that he would take his revenge against humanity.

He

also emailed a lengthy written manifesto to his mother, father and

therapist that detailed his plans and his contempt for everyone he felt

was responsible for his sexual frustration.

It subsequently emerged

that police officers who had visited him three weeks before the

killings were aware that he had posted disturbing videos online but did

not watch them, and they did not know about his final video detailing

his "day of retribution" until after the rampage had taken place.

Some

family members of the victims have criticised the actions of the

police, while others have become vocal advocates for gun control. Last

week, the parents of the first three people who were killed said they

were frustrated by authorities' handling of the case.

The bodies

of Rodger's flatmates, James Hong and David Wang, were found inside

their beachside apartment near the University of California's Santa

Barbara campus in Isla Vista along with that of a friend who had been

visiting them, George Chen.

They had been stabbed to death. It is not clear how the slightly built Rodger was able to overpower them.

In

a joint interview, the victims' parents told the Washington Post that

they visited the crime scene and saw no blood on the walls or ceiling.

Police had removed a 6ft by 5ft piece of carpet in one bedroom and vinyl

flooring around the toilet had been cut. The parents expressed

unhappiness at the amount of information they had been given, but said

the limited amount of material removed from the apartment suggested the

killings were confined to a small space.

The three people shot

dead were named as Katherine Cooper, 22, and Veronika Weiss, 19,

students who were shot outside a sorority house, and Christopher

Michael-Martinez, 20, another student who was shot at a delicatessen.

Rodger

was found dead with a gunshot wound in his black BMW. He had three 9mm

semi-automatic guns and more than 400 rounds of unused ammunition.

The full interview airs on Friday night.