Police had met California shooter

Santa Barbara County sheriff: Gunman flew ‘under the radar’

Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, pays her respects at a makeshift memorial in front of the IV Deli Mart, where part of Friday night's mass shooting took place by a drive-by shooter Sunday, May 25, 2014 in the Isla Vista area near Goleta, Calif. Calif. Sheriff's officials said Elliot Rodger, 22, went on a rampage near the University of California, Santa Barbara, stabbing three people to death at his apartment before shooting and killing three more in a crime spree through a nearby neighborhood. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, pays her respects at a makeshift memorial in front of the IV Deli Mart, where part of Friday night's mass shooting took place by a drive-by shooter Sunday, May 25, 2014 in the Isla Vista area near Goleta, Calif. Calif. Sheriff's officials said Elliot Rodger, 22, went on a rampage near the University of California, Santa Barbara, stabbing three people to death at his apartment before shooting and killing three more in a crime spree through a nearby neighborhood. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

Monday, May 26, 2014

The gunman involved in a killing rampage in Southern California on Friday night was able to convince sheriff's deputies who visited him in April that he was not a threat to himself or to others, the sheriff of Santa Barbara County said Sunday.

The gunman, identified as Elliot Rodger, 22, did not meet the criteria for an involuntary hold when deputies visited him as part of a welfare check April 30, Sheriff Bill Brown said Sunday on CNN's State of the Union. The deputies were acting on the complaints of Rodger's mother, who was alarmed by videos he had posted online.

"They found him to be apparently shy, timid, polite, well-spoken," Brown said. "He explained to the deputies that this was a misunderstanding" and that while he was having some social problems, they were unlikely to continue.

"He was able to convince them that he was not at that point a danger to himself or anyone else," the sheriff said.

The sheriff's office "was not aware of any videos until after the shooting rampage occurred," Santa Barbara County sheriff's office spokesman Kelly Hoover said.

It's not clear why the deputies did not become aware of the videos. Attorney Alan Shifman said the Rodger family had called police after being alarmed by YouTube videos "regarding suicide and the killing of people" that their son had been posting.

In his manifesto, which he called "My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger," Rodger said of the visit by officers: "If they had demanded to search my room ... That would have ended everything. For a few horrible seconds I thought it was all over. When they left, the biggest wave of relief swept over me."

Rodger, a college student who ranted on the videos against women for rejecting him, was found dead with a bullet wound to his head after the attacks Friday. The police said apparently he had killed himself.

Police said Rodger killed six people and wounded 13 others in the small town of Isla Vista, Calif. He stabbed three men to death in his apartment and shot and killed three students as he drove to several locations in the town, the police said.

Doris Fuller, executive director of the Virginia-based Treatment Advocacy Center, said California law has provisions that permit emergency psychiatric evaluations of individuals who pose a serious threat, but that was never triggered.

Rodger's family has disclosed their son was under the care of therapists.

"Once again, we are grieving over deaths and devastation caused by a young man who was sending up red flags for danger that failed to produce intervention in time to avert tragedy," Fuller said in a statement. "In this case, the red flags were so big the killer's parents had called police ... and yet the system failed."

Rodger posted at least 22 YouTube videos. He wrote in his manifesto that he uploaded most of his videos in the week leading up to April 26, when he originally planned to carry out his attacks. He postponed his plan after catching a cold.

In a last-minute bid to intervene, Rodger's parents raced to his home Friday night after his mother saw his online threats, but the couple heard the news of a shooting on the radio as they were on the freeway, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

Family friend Simon Astaire told the newspaper that Rodger's mother, Chin Rodger, got a call from her son's therapist shortly before the shooting started that he had emailed his ranting manifesto. Then, the mother found the YouTube video in which he threatens to kill people. She alerted authorities and set off frantically with her ex-husband, Hollywood director Peter Rodger.

But by the time they arrived, officers confirmed their son already had gone on a deadly rampage.

Investigators, including from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, searched his parents' homes Sunday and left with boxes of evidence.

Brown said the deputies who originally had visited Rodger in response to concerns raised by his family were not the only professionals who had not understood the extent of the man's problems.

"It's very apparent that he was able to convince many people for many years that he didn't have this deep, underlying obvious mental illness that also manifested itself in this terrible tragedy," Brown said, adding that Rodger had been "able to fly under the radar."

Brown said the deputies who visited Rodger "probably" spoke to him about the three handguns he had bought last year, but added, "I'm not sure an actual weapons check was conducted."

The first three killed Friday were male stabbing victims in Rodger's own apartment. The Santa Barbara County sheriff's office identified them Sunday as Cheng Yuan Hong, 20, and George Chen, 19 -- both from San Jose, Calif. -- and Weihan Wang, 20, of Fremont, Calif. They were all UC Santa Barbara students. Hong and Chen were listed on the lease as Rodger's roommates, and investigators were trying to determine whether Wang was a roommate or was visiting the night of the killings.

Police also identified the three other victims, who were killed by gunshots, as Katherine Breann Cooper, 22, of Chino Hills, Calif.; Veronika Elizabeth Weiss, 19, of Westlake Village, Calif.; and Christopher Ross Michaels-Martinez, 20, of Los Osos, Calif. All three were students at UC Santa Barbara.

Information for this article was contributed by Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Brian Knowlton of The New York Times and by Martha Mendoza, Michael R. Blood and Oskar Garcia of The Associated Press.

A Section on 05/26/2014