Lafayette Theater Shooter’s Journal Released
Residents of Lafayette will no doubt remember where they were and what they were doing in the early evening hours of July 23rd 2015. That was the night that Lafayette joined a rather infamous list of cities where gunmen have opened fire on innocent victims. The shooting that night took place inside a local movie theater and was perpetrated by an individual whose writings demonstrate symptoms consistent with certain mental illnesses.
The journal of the Lafayette shooter was released to the public on Wednesday and Paula Broussard who is a professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette told the Louisiana Radio Network,
There's definitely some mental health issues, some sexual repression, and some overall issues of being a non-functioning member of society.
Broussard suggested that the writings of the man who wounded nine, killed two, and then turned the gun on himself certainly fit a pattern that is consistent with mass murderers communications.
We wouldn't call him insane because sanity is a legal definition. But there's a mental health problem there. There's something that has put them on the edge of society where they're non-functioning.
Broussard said the writings in the journal of the gunman appears to be a collection of random thoughts. You can read the journal here.
The journal writings did not indicate a particular motive as to why the shooter chose Lafayette. The writings did reference a shooting that took place earlier in the year in Charleston South Carolina in which a shooter open fire in a church. The journal writings "thanked" the shooter in South Carolina for the "wake up call". In that shooting nine victims were gunned down while at a church service.