Former NFL player suspected of killing 5 in US, then himself

A former American professional football player is suspected of killing five people including a doctor and his wife in the state of South Carolina before dying by suicide, US media reported Thursday.

The suspect, identified as former San Francisco 49ers cornerback Phillip Adams, allegedly fatally shot the five victims Wednesday in the city of Rock Hill. 

He then returned to his parents' house, where he killed himself early Thursday after a standoff with police.

The five victims include a 70-year-old doctor, his 69-year-old spouse and two of their grandchildren, aged five and nine, as well as a 38-year-old man killed outside their house.

A sixth person was hospitalized with serious gunshot wounds, York County sheriff's spokesman Trent Faris said.

Neither the York County medical examiner's office nor the sheriff's department responded to AFP's request for confirmation of the suspect's identity.

Speaking to a local television channel, Adams' father Alonzo said he believed playing professional football had "messed him up."

Adams' professional career, from 2010-2015, was marred by injuries, including concussions. 

In addition to the 49ers, he also played for the New England Patriots, the New York Jets, the Oakland Raiders and the Atlanta Falcons.

The quintuple murder comes as the United States is still reeling from two mass shootings in early 2021 in Atlanta and Boulder, Colorado.

US President Joe Biden, who unveiled a plan for gun control on Thursday, branded gun violence in the country an "epidemic" and an "international embarrassment."

During his speech, Biden cited the Rock Hill shooting as an example.

Agence France-Presse

8chan owner vows changes in House testimony over links to mass shootings

WASHINGTON - 8chan, the online message board linked to several recent mass shootings, plans to restrict parts of the website during a "state of emergency," the site's owner Jim Watkins told a US House panel in a written statement.

Watkins completed his closed-door deposition on Thursday, said Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and Ranking Republican Mike Rogers. The panel last month subpoenaed the American living in the Philippines to answer its questions about whether the website "amplifies extremist views, leading to the radicalization of its users."

Watkins "provided vast and helpful information to the Committee about the structure, operation, and policies of 8Chan and his other companies. We look forward to his continued cooperation with the Committee as he indicated his desire to do so during today’s deposition," they said in a joint statement.

"If 8chan comes back online, it will be done when 8chan develops additional tools to counter illegal content under United States law," Watkins said in the statement released by his lawyer.

"If 8chan returns, staff would implement a way to restrict certain parts of the website during a state of emergency, in which case any board in question would be put in a read-only mode until it would be deemed safe enough to enable posting again," it said.

Critics last month pressed tech companies to shun 8chan, which in its Twitter profile describes its location as “The Darkest Reaches of the Internet" and has become a hotbed for white extremist content.

Thompson and Rogers said last month the shooting deaths of 22 people at an El Paso Walmart store was "at least the third act of supremacist violence linked to your website this year."

The El Paso gunman allegedly posted a 4-page statement on 8chan before his attack, while the site was also apparently used this year by the shooters who attacked two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand and a synagogue in Poway, California, lawmakers told Watkins in a letter last month.

Benjamin Barr, a lawyer for Watkins, said in a statement to the committee, that "8chan has never tolerated illegal speech and has a consistent track record of working with law enforcement agencies when appropriate."

Watkins said 8chan "has worked responsibly with law enforcement agencies when unprotected speech is discovered on its platform. No single platform can sensibly prevent all hateful, illegal, or threatening speech - it can only act in due time to remove it."

The company did remove some posts soon after mass shootings in Texas, California and New Zealand, he said.

But Watkins added, "my company has no intention of deleting constitutionally protected hate speech. I feel the remedy for this type of speech is counter speech, and I'm certain that this is the view of the American justice system."

The message board has been voluntarily down since late August.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

8Chan creator admits online form hard to moderate in wake of US mass shootings

EL PASO, Texas - The community of this border city continues to mourn for the lives of 22 people killed in the Aug. 3 shooting at the Walmart store. They are also trying to make sense of why a 21-year-old man from a Dallas suburb would go on a shooting spree.

But one thing certain for now is that the gunman used the internet messaging forum 8chan prior to his crime where he expressed hatred for Hispanic people and laid out a plan for a deadly attack on the Hispanic community.

The site's creator Fredrick Brennan, who migrated to the Philippines in 2014, admitted that he created a "Frankenstein monster" after realizing that the online forum has led to massacres in the US.

Brennan started 8chan in 2013 as a means of free speech. He handed over management to a man named Jim Watkins in 2016.

Brennan said it's been challenging to moderate postings on the forum. He's been calling for the site to be shut down. It's now inaccessible.

“I never really imagined that this would happen -- that shooters would post their manifestos on 8chan. And I put some of the blame on the way they're administering it. They have this saying that was on 8chan before it was closed, you know, 'embrace infamy,' and they had that right on the homepage of 8chan," Brennan said.

Brennan said one of the reasons he resigned was because of the difficulty in moderating the site.

"It's like letting the mental patients run the asylum," he said.

US lawmakers have asked that the current owner of 8chan, Watkins, testify before the House Homeland Security Committee.

According to authorities, Watkins is not located in the Philippines but he posted a message on 8chan's Twitter account claiming to be on his way to America to accept the lawmakers' invitation.

Read more on Balitang America

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Lawyers: El Paso shooting suspect's mother called police over son's gun

The mother of a young man suspected of gunning down 22 people at a Walmart in the US state of Texas called police weeks before, concerned about a military-style weapon he owned, the family's lawyers told CNN.

The report comes with bipartisan sentiment for action on gun safety appearing to grow after the killings in El Paso and another mass shooting hours later in Dayton, Ohio that left nine people dead.

CNN reported that the mother of the El Paso suspect, Patrick Crusius, had called police in the Dallas suburb of Allen weeks before the attack because she was concerned about his owning an "AK"-type firearm, the network quoted family lawyers as saying.

AK usually refers to a Kalashnikov, a type of semi-automatic rifle.

The lawyers, Chris Ayres and R. Jack Ayres, of Dallas, told CNN that Crusius's mother was worried given her son's age, maturity level and lack of experience with such a weapon.

They added that, during the call, a police officer told her that -- based on what she described -- her 21-year-old son was legally able to purchase the weapon.

But the mother's call was "informational" and not motivated out of a concern that her son posed a threat, the lawyers said, adding the mother did not give police her name or her son's name.

"This was not a volatile, explosive, erratic behaving kid," CNN quoted Chris Ayres as saying. "It's not like alarm bells were going off."

Chris Ayres could not immediately be reached when AFP contacted his law office.

Asked about the CNN report, Sergeant Jon Felty, of the Allen Police Department, told AFP: "I have nothing in our database to support this claim."

About 20 minutes before the rampage with a semi-automatic weapon, Crusius, who is white, posted a four-page white supremacist "manifesto" on the online forum 8chan that railed against Hispanics.

Several of those killed were Mexicans.

After the shootings, US President Donald Trump faced protests that his rhetoric on race has fuelled extremism.

In an address to the nation on Monday, Trump rejected racism and white supremacist ideology, and said he supported "red flag" laws allowing authorities to confiscate weapons from people believed to present grave risks. 

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Racism, misogyny: US authorities probe motives of 2 gunmen

One was fueled by racist hatred of immigrants and warned of a "Hispanic invasion." The other's motives are less clear but he apparently resented women and compiled a "hit list" of girls in high school.

Police and the FBI were trying to piece together on Tuesday what drove two young American men to commit unspeakable acts of carnage over the weekend.

Patrick Crusius, a 21-year-old unemployed white man from the Dallas suburb of Allen, opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon at a Walmart on Saturday in El Paso, Texas.

About 20 minutes before the rampage, which left 22 people dead, he posted a four-page white supremacist "manifesto" on the online forum 8chan that railed against Hispanics.

In the document titled "The Inconvenient Truth," Crusius wrote that the attack "is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas."

Crusius claimed he was "defending" the US "from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion" and made references to the Christchurch shootings in New Zealand, where a white gunman killed 51 worshippers at two mosques in March.

El Paso police chief Greg Allen said Crusius has not shown any remorse since his arrest and "appears to be in a state of shock and confusion."

According to court documents, Crusius has been unemployed for the past five months and living with his grandparents.

In a statement, his grandparents said he had lived with them while attending classes at Collin County College but moved out of their home about six weeks ago.

According to CNN, a Twitter account linked to Crusius frequently shared tweets by President Donald Trump including one with Trump's name spelled out with guns.

In a LinkedIn profile, Crusius wrote, "I'm not really motivated to do anything more than what's necessary to get by.

"Working in general sucks, but i guess a career in Software Development suits me well. I spend about 8 hours every day on the computer so that counts towards technology experience I guess."

El Paso is about a nine-hour drive from the Dallas area and Crusius appears to have deliberately selected the city because of its heavily Hispanic population.

El Paso lies on the Rio Grande River which marks the US border with Mexico, and has a population of 680,000, of which 83 percent are of Hispanic descent.

- 'An oddball' -

The motivations of the other gunman, Connor Betts, 24, are less clear but several former friends told US media that he had a history of disturbing behavior, particularly towards women.

Also armed with a semi-automatic weapon, Betts killed nine people including his sister, 22-year-old Megan Betts, in Dayton, Ohio, early Sunday morning. He was shot dead by police within a minute.

Investigators have found no evidence so far to indicate that the shooting was motivated by racial hatred.

"Just based on where we're at now we are not seeing any indication of race being a motive," Dayton police chief Richard Biehl said.

Betts was white and six of his nine victims were black.

Mika Carpenter, 24, who has known Betts since she was 13 years old, told The New York Times "he was kind of hateful to women because they didn't want to date him."

The Dayton Daily News reported that Betts had been suspended from Bellbrook High School for drawing up a "hit list" of girls.

According to Buzzfeed News, Betts was a member of a "pornogrind" heavy metal band called Menstrual Munchies which performed songs with themes of sexual violence.

Demoy Howell, a friend of Betts, told the Dayton Daily News that Betts was "always a bit of an oddball."

"He had a dark sense of humor -- jokes about people dying," Howell told the newspaper. "He would wear all black. I remember sensing a dark energy around him.

"I think this is less of a hate crime and more of an 'I hate everybody' crime," Howell said.

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El Paso residents tell Trump to stay away after shooting

Residents in majority-Hispanic El Paso told US President Donald Trump Tuesday to stay away amid fury over his anti-immigration rhetoric as he struggles to unite the country in the wake of mass shootings that killed 31 people.

Trump is scheduled to travel Wednesday to the Texan border city where 22 died in a weekend gun massacre, before heading around 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) northeast and to Dayton, Ohio where a second gunman shot nine dead hours later. 

The president called on Americans in a nationwide address Monday to condemn bigotry but community leaders say his words rang hollow set against a longstanding refusal to call out white supremacy and a history of provocative tweets widely condemned as racist.

"This president, who helped create the hatred that made Saturday's tragedy possible, should not come to El Paso," tweeted Beto O'Rourke, a Democratic presidential hopeful and former congressman who grew up in the city.

"We do not need more division. We need to heal. He has no place here."

Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley meanwhile said she would meet Trump and tell him "how unhelpful he's being. His comments weren't helpful on guns."

Before striking at a Walmart superstore in El Paso, the 21-year-old suspected gunman, who is white and from the Dallas area, reportedly posted an online manifesto railing against a "Hispanic invasion of Texas."

Critics pointed out that the language echoed much of Trump's rhetoric on Twitter and at rallies, where he has frequently framed Hispanic migrants as part of an "invasion."

Trump has also characterized Mexicans and Central Americans as criminals, gang members and rapists and described the communities of African American lawmakers on several occasions as "infested" with crime and filth.

- 'Not welcome' -

Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, whose district includes the area targeted by the El Paso gunman, urged Trump "to consider the fact that his words and his actions have played a role in this."

"From my perspective, he is not welcome here," Escobar told MSNBC. "He should not come here while we are in mourning."

El Paso mayor Dee Margo, announcing the visit, stressed that he was welcoming the president because it was his duty to do so.

Presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway accused Democrats of politicizing a moment of acute pain while Trump was trying to "bring the country together, heal a nation."

She was backed by the chairman of the El Paso County Republican Party, Adolpho Telles, who defended Trump's visit but told CNN he needs to be more careful about his language.

In his nationwide address, Trump spoke out against racism but blamed mental illness, video games and the internet for fueling gun violence, sidestepping the fact that other countries with these issues do not have mass shootings. 

He had nothing substantial to say about gun control measures, drawing expressions of disappointment from those hoping for a healing moment.

"He mentioned gun issues one time," said Whaley, the Dayton mayor. "I think, watching the president over the past few years on the issue of guns... I don't know if he knows what he believes, frankly," she said.

- 'He has no right' -

Residents in El Paso, unimpressed by Trump's tightly scripted appeal for unity, told AFP they were fearful of a rise in white nationalism and said the president was part of the problem.

"I do blame our president. Since the moment he got into office the rhetoric, the hate that he's got towards people that are just different color skin, he has no right," said Silvia Rios.

The president began Tuesday apparently irritated by veiled criticism from former president Barack Obama, who warned US leaders against divisive rhetoric.

"We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments," said Obama, who has only rarely spoken out on public affairs since leaving office in 2017.

In response Trump retweeted a quote from an anchor on Fox News who said it was inappropriate for a former president to criticize a successor over a shooting.

"President Obama had 32 mass shootings during his reign. Not many people said Obama is out of control," read the quote from Brian Kilmeade.

Legislation to overhaul gun control under Obama failed in 2013 when the Republican-controlled Senate rejected a ban of assault-style weapons and expanding background checks.

He told the BBC two years later gun control was "the one area where I feel that I've been most frustrated and most stymied."

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Obama: Reject language from leaders that 'normalizes racist sentiments'

WASHINGTON -- Former President Barack Obama responded to the weekend mass shootings in Ohio and Texas on Monday with a plea to Americans to reject the language of hatred, fear and intolerance from any of their leaders.

"We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments," Obama said in a statement posted on Twitter that did not refer to President Donald Trump by name.

The shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, killed 31 people.

A 21-year-old white man has been charged with capital murder in Saturday's shooting spree in Texas. Police in El Paso cited a racist, anti-immigrant manifesto posted online shortly before the shooting, which they attributed to the suspect.

Democrats said Trump was indirectly to blame for the attack in Texas, with some drawing connections between his rhetoric to a resurgence in nationalism and xenophobic sentiment.

Trump on Monday proposed tighter monitoring of the internet, mental health reform and wider use of the death penalty in response to mass shootings.

Trump did not address accusations that his own anti-immigrant and racially charged comments have contributed to a rise in race tensions, nor did he call for broad gun control measures.

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2 more Texas shooting victims die in attack, Trump to visit El Paso

EL PASO, Texas - Two more victims of a shooting rampage at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, died of their wounds on Monday, police said, raising the death toll to 22 in the massacre as U.S. President Donald Trump planned a visit to the stricken community.

The latest fatalities bring to 31 the number of people killed during the weekend in mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, that have touched off a new furor over gun violence in the United States.

Patrick Crusius, 21, has been charged with a single count of capital murder in the El Paso case, court documents show, in what is likely a legal place holder to keep him in custody while the investigation is under way.

Authorities have cited a lengthy anti-immigrant manifesto, apparently posted online by the suspect before the Saturday morning shooting in the heavily Hispanic border city, which they said was evidence the bloodshed was racially motivated.

Eight of those killed in the attack were Mexican citizens, according to the Mexican government.

The four-page statement uploaded to 8chan, a largely un-moderated online message board often used by extremists, called the Walmart attack "a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas."

It also expressed support for a gunman who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March.

The El Paso killings prompted 8chan founder Frederick Brennan, in an interview with the New York Times, to call for the site to be shut down. Brennan no longer has control of 8chan, which is now run from the Philippines by a U.S. Army veteran, the Times reported.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Saturday's rampage appeared to be a hate crime and federal prosecutors called it domestic terrorism. A Texas prosecutor said the state will seek the death penalty against Crusius if he is convicted.

Trump said Americans "must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy" and blamed the internet and violent video games for fostering violence.

TRUMP TO VISIT WEDNESDAY

El Paso Mayor Dee Margo told reporters at an afternoon news conference that Trump would visit the city on Wednesday. The Democratic mayor asked that the visit by the Republican president amid a divisive gun control debate not be politicized.

U.S. gun control activists say the internet and video games cannot be blamed because they are also are popular in countries where mass shootings are virtually unknown, in part because it is harder to obtain a firearm.

It was unclear if Crusius had retained a lawyer or would make an initial court appearance. El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen said the suspect was cooperating with investigators.

The suspect's grandparents said in a statement read to reporters by a family outside their home in the Dallas suburb of Allen, 650 miles (1,046 km) east of El Paso, that they were devastated by the attack.

"He lived with us in our house in Allen, Texas, while he attended Collin College," they said. "He moved out of our house six weeks ago and has spent a few nights here while we were out of town."

FBI Director Christopher Wray told a congressional panel on July 23 that the bureau has recorded about 100 arrests of domestic terrorism suspects in the preceding nine months and that most investigations of that kind involve some form of white supremacy.

The Texas rampage was followed just 13 hours later by the mass shooting in Ohio and came a week after a man shot dead three people at a California garlic festival before taking his own life.

In Dayton, Ohio, a gunman in body armor and a mask killed nine people in less than a minute and wounded 27 others in the downtown historic district before he was shot dead by police.

Police said the El Paso suspect opened fire with a rifle on Walmart shoppers, many of them bargain-hunting for back-to-school supplies, then surrendered to officers who confronted him outside the store.

In El Paso, residents on Monday brought crosses representing each of the victims to a growing memorial site near the store.

El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, together with the neighboring city of Las Cruces, New Mexico, form a metropolitan border area of some 2.5 million residents constituting the largest bilingual, bi-national population in North America.

Trump has derided asylum seekers and other immigrants coming across the U.S. southern border as liars and criminals, prompting Democrats to accuse him of racism.

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Do video games, mental illness drive US massacres?

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump on Monday tied mass shootings that left 31 dead in 2 US cities over the weekend to hate, violent video games and mental illness.

But with 255 mass shooting events counted so far this year in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive, analysts say those factors don't explain all the violence.

Not all mass shooters show signs of mental health problems, or play violent video games, or have political grudges. But one factor is omnipresent: the ease of acquiring guns.

VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES 

"We must stop the glorification of violence in our society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace," Trump said.

It's true that some recent mass shooters played violent video games obsessively.

Adam Lanza, who killed 26 schoolchildren and school employees at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, spent hours a day playing some of the most violent video games, including one called "School Shooting."

Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida in 2018, reportedly played violent video games up to 15 hours a day.

But Chris Ferguson, a psychology professor at Stetson University who has studied the issue, says there is no causal link with real attacks.

Hundreds of millions of people around the world play first-person shooter games such as "Fortnite" and "Call of Duty," and do not turn into mass murderers.

"Violent video games do not contribute to mass shootings, not in whole, not in part," said Ferguson.

"It's probably actively causing harm to the extent it distracts people from real causes of violence," he said on Twitter.

The American Psychological Association has found a link between violent games and films and increased aggression among children, but says it is only one risk factor.

MENTAL ILLNESS 

Trump also tied shootings to "mentally disturbed individuals" who should not have access to firearms.

"Mental illness and hatred pull the trigger -- not the gun," he said.

There is a link in some cases.

Marine Corps veteran Ian David Long, 28, who killed 12 at a country music bar in California in November last year, was believed to have post-traumatic stress disorder.

Twenty-four-year-old Connor Betts, who killed nine on Sunday at a bar in Ohio, reportedly showed dangerous tendencies while in high school.

And Cruz, the Florida high school attacker, had a history of mental health problems.

"On the face of it, somebody that goes out and massacres a bunch of strangers, that's not the act of a healthy mind," Jeffrey Swanson, a professor in psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine, told AFP.

Yet, he said, there are 10 million Americans with serious mental illnesses "and the overwhelming majority of them do not engage in violent behavior."

Most mass shooters, he said, "do not have the serious identifiable mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, that impairs the brain's ability to reason or see reality, or bipolar disorder."

DIVISIVE POLITICS AND THE INTERNET 

Some attacks are also linked to divisive politics, which play out online, especially on the 8chan website.

Like two earlier mass murderers, the man who killed 22 at a Walmart in Texas on Saturday, identified in media reports as 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, released a "manifesto" on 8chan attacking the "Hispanic invasion" from Mexico, echoing Trump's own political rhetoric.

According to journalist Robert Evans, writing on of Bellingcat, 8chan has turned mass shootings into a video-game-like competition, where body counts are referred to as "high scores." 

"The act of massacring innocents has been gamified," he wrote on Sunday.

AVAILABILITY OF GUNS 

Still, one common thread in all the attacks is the ease of obtaining weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Stephen Paddock, who massacred 58 people and wounded hundreds attending a concert in Las Vegas in 2017, was not apparently mentally ill, ideologically motivated, or a video gamer. He launched his attack using two dozen weapons, mostly AR-15-type assault rifles.

Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people at a Pennsylvania synagogue last October, carried 4 guns in his attack and legally owned 21.

And Betts had an assault rifle he ordered online from Texas, equipped with a 100-round drum magazine.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Deadliest recent mass shootings in the US

Nine people were killed by a gunman in a mass shooting in the US state of Ohio early Sunday, hours after a shooting in Texas killed 20.

Here are of some of the other deadliest recent mass shootings in the United States:

Vegas concert: 58 killed 
From his hotel, a 64-year-old retired accountant shoots down on a crowd attending an outdoor country music concert on October 1, 2017, killing 58 people and wounding around 550 before committing suicide. It is the worst mass shooting in modern US history.

Florida club: 49 killed
A heavily armed gunman opens fire inside a gay nightclub in the city of Orlando on June 12, 2016, killing 49 people. The attacker is killed in a shootout with police. He pledges allegiance to the Islamic State group, which later claims responsibility.

Sandy Hook: 26 killed 
A 20-year-old man with a history of mental health issues kills his mother in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012 before blasting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School and shooting dead 20 six- and seven-year old children and six adults. He commits suicide.

Texas church: 25 killed
A 26-year-old man who was court-martialed while in the Air Force shoots dead 25 worshippers during Sunday services and wounds at least 20 others at a Baptist church in the small rural community of Sutherland Springs outside San Antonio, Texas, on November 5, 2017. The shooter flees and is later found dead in his car with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Florida high school: 17 dead
A 19-year-old former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who was expelled for disciplinary reasons returns to the school in Parkland, Florida, and opens fire on February 14, 2018, killing 14 students and three adult staff members. The gunman's trial is expected to begin in January 2020.

California office party: 14 dead 
A radicalized Muslim couple storm a Christmas office party at a social services center in San Bernardino in December 2015 and gun down 14 people, wounding 22 others. They are shot dead by police.

Virginia Beach: 12 dead 
A disgruntled engineer shoots dead 12 at a municipal building in this coastal city on May 31, 2019. The 40-year-old had worked for the public works department in Virginia Beach for about 15 years before carrying out the rampage at his workplace. He died in a gunfight with police.

California bar: 12 dead 
On November 7, 2018, a 28-year-old US Marine Corps combat veteran opens fire in a crowded country music bar in California, killing 12 people. The assailant, a troubled former machine gunner who served a tour in Afghanistan, dies of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Colorado cinema: 12 dead
A young man wearing body armor opens fire in a movie theater showing a late-night premiere of a Batman film in Aurora, Colorado in July 2012. Twelve people are killed and 70 wounded. He is sentenced to life in prison.

Synagogue in Pittsburgh: 11 dead
On October 27, 2018, a 46-year-old gunman bursts into the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburg during Shabbat services, killing eleven people. He reportedly yells "All Jews must die!" during the attack. He is indicted on 29 counts, some of which carry the death penalty. 

High school in Santa Fe: 10 dead
A 17-year-old student armed with a shotgun and a revolver opens fire just as classes are starting at his school in Santa Fe, Texas, on May 18, 2018, killing ten people including eight students. The student, who authorities say used weapons legally owned by his father, is taken into custody on murder charges. 

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Five years on, America still haunted by Sandy Hook

Of all the mass shootings to have scarred the American consciousness in recent years, the one at Sandy Hook stands out for its child victims: 20 young lives cut short inside their elementary school classroom.

Five years later, the wounds are still gaping.

At 9:30 am on Thursday, the bells of the St. Rose of Lima church in Newtown, Connecticut rang out 26 times, one chime for each life lost, as the small community came together in remembrance.

At the same hour, on December 14, 2012, a 20-year-old named Adam Lanza burst into the brick school building in Newtown armed with a Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle and two pistols. Earlier that morning, he had shot and killed his own mother at home.

He fired more than 150 times in the corridors and classrooms, killing 20 children between the ages of six and seven, and six women who worked at the school, before committing suicide.

"FIVE. YEARS. The hurt is the same. The suffering. The missing. The heartbreak. The sadness," tweeted Erica Lafferty, whose mother the school principal Dawn Hochsprung was killed trying to stop the shooter. "Nothing will ever fill this void."

In an America already traumatized by previous school shootings, at Columbine High School in Colorado or Virginia Tech university in Virginia, Sandy Hook was a shock: it was the first to target children so young.

"People ask me: how is Sandy Hook doing today? said Chris Murphy, a senator from the small New England state.

"Sandy Hook will never recover, Sandy Hook will never be the same."

- Obama's tears -

Barack Obama, then nearing the end of his first term in office, shed tears as he addressed the shooting from the White House a few hours later.

"We're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics," said Obama, who would later describe the massacre as the worst day of his presidency.

But for those hoping that Sandy Hook would push lawmakers to enact tougher restrictions on guns, the years after the shooting brought disappointment.

Post-Sandy Hook gun control legislation was defeated in Congress in April 2013, and virtually nothing has changed since then, beyond local measures taken by cities and states.

"America needs common-sense gun laws more than ever and we must not stop pushing until we get them," tweeted the former president Bill Clinton on Thursday, as he paid tribute to the victims five years on.

What Sandy Hook did bring, however, was a new awareness by schools across the United States of their vulnerability.

Since 2012, alert procedures and drills have multiplied. Doors and windows are reinforced, and schools have closer ties with police.

American schoolchildren are now taught how to respond to an "active shooter" situation, and staff are trained on how to barricade their classrooms.

- Better school security -

Recent events have illustrated the importance of these steps: when a man killed five people in rampage in northern California in November, he attempted to gain access to an elementary school but was unsuccessful.

It only took about 50 seconds for the school to go on lockdown, helping to avert a potential bloodbath.

Sandy Hook also gave rise to new organizations that take aim at gun violence in the US, which kills 90 people per day.

One such group, Sandy Hook Promise, works to prevent shootings by identifying warning signs, such as young people in a situation of social isolation or showing a fascination with morbid ideas.

In a sinister twist, the shooting has also sparked flourishing conspiracy theories -- purveyed by some opponents of gun control -- who claim the massacre was staged.

A professor at a Florida university, fired from his job after insisting Sandy Hook was a hoax, lost a lawsuit this week claiming that his right to free speech was infringed.

But Lafferty, the principal's daughter, says she has suffered five years of online attacks by conspiracy theorist trolls, and the abuse continued the day of the shooting anniversary.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Gay Americans are shaken, unbowed by nightclub attack

NEW YORK - For many Americans, gay bars and nightclubs have long served as a place of refuge, a carefree place filled with like-minded souls away from the relatives, employers or anyone else who might judge them disapprovingly, or worse.

The massacre at a gay nightclub in Florida was seen as a jarring reminder of the discrimination they can still face, giving some renewed cause to march through city streets on Sunday in the Gay Pride events that fill the June calendar.

What compelled Omar Mateen to kill people dancing and mingling at Orlando's Pulse nightclub in the early hours of Sunday in the deadliest shooting spree in U.S. history is still being investigated. But the killer's father told NBC News his son had become angry after seeing two men kissing in Miami recently.

President Barack Obama, gay-rights groups and parade goers at Gay Pride events on Sunday cast the killings as an affront to the civil liberties of gay people after a string of hard-fought legal successes, including the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling a year ago that all 50 states must allow same-sex marriage.

"An incident like this brings the hatred that does exist out there to the forefront," Craig Baldwin said as he joined hundreds of people gathering in Washington, D.C., for the annual Gay Pride festival on Sunday, where people were by turns somber and defiant. A 39-year-old director for the Shakespeare Theater Company, Baldwin was handing out stickers that said "Shakespeare - Boys Kissing Boys Since 1592."

"It is a reminder of what we have to do to spread love, not hate," he said.

Julie Sibbing, 53, choked back tears as she discussed the shooting, saying it was important for her not to skip the parade.

"There is risk in this life and we're not going to let hate win," she said. "We've got to be amongst the family today. Everybody is suffering. I think we all kind of want to be together today."

In Orlando, leaders of groups that service LGBT residents announced an effort to raise money for the victims of the shooting had amassed more than $430,000 within hours.

"We will love and support the victims even as we join to eradicate the hatred that lies at the core of this violence," said Mary Meeks, a prominent Florida civil rights lawyer.

FLOWERS AT STONEWALL

Gay Pride parades in cities across the United States have grown out of the marches in 1969 protesting the police raids at the Stonewall Inn, a long-standing New York City bar that served gay people who were otherwise ostracized from society.

Rebecca Triglianos and Nicole Martin, a couple from Irvington, New York, contemplated the growing pile of flowers on Sunday outside the bar, a designated National Historic Landmark for its role in the gay-rights movement.

"This is a meeting space, we came here to celebrate marriage equality so we would come here to mourn a loss as well," said Triglianos, referring to the jubilant crowds that spontaneously gathered at the Greenwich Village bar a year ago to celebrate the Supreme Court's marriage decision.

Obama evoked the important role that bars and nightclubs have played in gay American life in his somber remarks on the attack at Pulse.

"The place where they were attacked is more than a nightclub," he said. "It is a place of solidarity and empowerment where people have come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds, and to advocate for their civil rights."

Some older Americans recalled the widespread public indifference that greeted the early years of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, in which thousands of gay men died, and saw in the outpouring of sympathy following Sunday's attack a welcome sign of changed times.

"The younger gay community has never really witnessed anything as devastating on the community as the older community did with HIV," said Raymond Michael Sharpe, 55, a bartender at another Orlando gay club. "This time, we have the support of the whole world behind us, thank God."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Pinoys in shock over latest mass shooting in California

CALIFORNIA – Filipinos working around the San Bernardino area where a mass shooting occurred were shocked by the incident.

Filipino Jasmine Barnes was at a nearby building when three armed people opened fire at the Inland Regional Center, killing 14 people and injuring 17 others on Wednesday afternoon.

A San Bernardino county employee, Barnes was at the center herself recently and works with many of the people inside.

"We work closely with them. I'm just afraid to ask kung sino yung mga victims. Nakakatakot talaga. I just don't feel safe sometimes anymore you know. I just pray that God will protect us," said Barnes.

While the incident was confined to the Inland Regional Center, most of the surrounding areas were affected.

Some Filipino women working for a remittance and cargo company just down the street from the incident said many of their Filipino customers work near and around the Center.

"It's kind of scary for us, even though we are here, but the thing is, it happened just near in this place," one of the Pinays said.

Another Pinay commented "Everybody is scared. It's the first time."

The latest mass shooting prompted several hours of lock down and closures. After hours of lockdowns, two suspects were shot and killed by officers while a third was apprehended.


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In familiar ritual, Obama consoles victims in Oregon mass shooting

ROSEBURG, Oregon - President Barack Obama, in a ritual that has become both familiar and frustrating to him, traveled to Oregon on Friday to console families of the victims of a community college shooting that once again sparked a push for U.S. gun reform.

The president, a Democrat who tried but failed to tighten firearms laws after previous mass shootings, arrived in a community where support for gun rights remains strong despite the massacre in which nine victims died in the deadliest massacre on U.S. soil in two years.

As his motorcade drove into town, supporters and protesters lined the streets with signs such as "Not giving up our rights," "Please leave us in Peace" and "Gun-free zones are for sitting ducks."

Obama met privately for about an hour with the families at a local high school.

Speaking to reporters afterwards, he said he had "strong feelings" about the issue of gun control and said the country needed to come together to prevent such shootings from happening in the future. But he did not show the same anger he has previously, saying the day was about the families.

Last week the president furiously denounced the killings as a symptom of a political choice by U.S. lawmakers to bow to pressure from the powerful National Rifle Association lobby group instead of reforming gun laws.

"I will politicize it, because our inaction is a political decision that we are making," he said at a White House news conference.

Obama has made regular trips to funerals and memorial services for victims of mass shootings during the past seven years as president. He has said the December 2012 shooting at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut was his toughest day as president.

About 250 people gathered in Roseburg, some driving for hours, to protest his visit.

"The way things played out with Sandy Hook and the president parading those families across the country to take away my gun rights - that is why I'm here," said Jason Harju, 40, who was wearing a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson handgun on his belt and a sweatshirt that said "OREGUN."

"He's using us to politicize this shooting. He's trying to get guns taken away," said Willie Windon, 56, a retired U.S. Army veteran.

Obama has tasked White House lawyers and advisers to look for new ways he could use his executive powers to enforce existing gun regulations.

One of those options is a regulatory change to require more dealers to get a license to sell guns, which would lead to more background checks on buyers - an action that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said she would take if elected in November 2016.

The White House had drafted a proposal on that issue in 2013, but was concerned it could be challenged in court and would be hard to enforce.

But officials are now hopeful that they can find a way to advance the plan, a White House official said on Friday.

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Investigators piece together motive of Oregon shooter

ROSEBURG, United States -- Investigators on Saturday pieced together evidence on why a student at a college in Oregon went on a rampage that left nine people dead before committing suicide as police cornered him.

Officials said the gunman, identified as 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer, was enrolled at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg and opened fire in his English writing class.

Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin said Mercer -- whom he has refused to identify by name so as not to give him notoriety -- exchanged fire with two officers who had rushed to the scene before committing suicide.

He said 14 weapons belonging to the shooter had been recovered, including six found at the school along with a flak jacket and ammunition.

Mercer's British-born father Ian, who lives in Torrance, California, said he was devastated by the killings and didn't understand how his son managed to amass his arsenal.

"How on earth could he compile (14) guns?" he told CNN. "If Chris had not been able to get hold of (14) guns it would not have happened."

"My heart goes out to all the other families affected by this," added Ian Mercer, who said he last saw his son when he moved to Oregon with his mother two years ago.

"I know nothing I can say can change what happened. But please believe me, my thoughts are with all those families."

Hanlin said investigators were poring through numerous leads and had interviewed hundreds of people to try to determine what set off the rampage.

The shooting, the latest in a string of similar attacks in recent years at colleges and schools in the United States, has revived a fierce debate on gun control.

Officials say Mercer had struggled with mental health problems for some time and left behind a typed statement several pages long in which he indicated he felt lonely and was inspired by previous mass killings.

The shooter also appeared obsessed with guns and religion and had leanings toward white supremacy.

The mother of one of the nine people injured in the carnage said her 16-year-old daughter saw Mercer single out a student and hand him an envelope before ordering the other students to move to the middle of the classroom.

"He told him 'you're going to be the lucky one' and gave him an envelope," Cheyenne Fitzgerald's mother told reporters. "He was going to be the one telling the story."

She said her daughter was shot in the back and had lost a kidney.

It was unclear how long Mercer had been a student at Umpqua, a small college of about 3,000 students located in Roseburg, a close-knit rural community.

The rampage took place on the fourth day of the new school year.

Witnesses said the gunman asked his victims their religion before shooting them execution-style.

- Passionate about guns -

Hanlin said investigators were examining how Mercer purchased his weapons and were looking at some of his online postings.

Mercer's neighbors have described him as withdrawn and quiet, but passionate when it came to guns.

"When we talked about guns and hunting, he was real open about it," Louie Flores, 32, a neighbor from California, told The New York Times.

"But anything about what was going on in his life, he really didn't say too much at all."

In online postings linked to Mercer's email address, investigators reportedly found one entry in which he expressed sympathy for a dismissed television reporter who killed two former colleagues during a live broadcast in Virginia in August.

In Roseburg, residents tried to come to terms with the tragedy and the sad reality that their town would now be remembered as the site of a mass killing.

The bodies of the nine victims -- five women and four men aged between 18 and 67 -- were handed back to their families on Friday.

Fire Marshall Greg Marlar said one of the victims, 20-year-old Treven Anspach, was the son of a local firefighter. Another rescuer lost his niece.

Chris Mintz, 30, an army veteran, had tried to stop the bloodshed by charging Mercer but was shot seven times while pleading that it was his son's sixth birthday. He survived.

The mass shooting reflects a grim reality of American life, with similar incidents happening on a regular basis.

The last mass shooting at a US school took place in 2012 when 20 elementary school students and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

According to data compiled by the group Everytown for Gun Safety, there have been 142 school shootings in the United States since the Sandy Hook massacre.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

NBA Wrap: LeBron says 'no room for' gun violence

NBA superstar LeBron James spoke out about the need for stricter gun laws Friday, one day after a 5-month-old girl in Cleveland was killed in a drive-by shooting.

The death of Aavielle Wakefield, plus a mass shooting at an Oregon community college in which nine people were killed, fueled the decision by the Cleveland Cavaliers star to take a public stand.

"Four kids under the age of 5 or 6 years old have been shot and killed or very badly injured," James told reporters in reference to recent shootings around Cleveland.

"There's no room for that. There's no room for guns, first of all, but then for violence toward kids or anybody. I see the news go across my phone and I'm sitting there in front of my three kids, so it automatically just hit me.

"It's not just in Cleveland, it's the whole nation that goes through this as well. We all hurt from it."


James did not witness the speech of President Barack Obama following the massacre in Roseburg, Oregon -- an attack in which the shooter was killed by police.

Part of Obama's comments included terming the United States as "the only advanced country on earth that sees these kinds of mass shootings every few months."

James agrees with Obama and wants to see change.

"I know what I see. I know how I feel," James said. "Obviously you're not going to be able to take every gun out. I don't know how you can do that. There's so many around now, today.

"But if there's some stipulations behind it or some penalties, some big-time penalties or rules or regulations about carrying firearms, legal or illegal, people will second-guess themselves."

- - -

Cavaliers free agent forward/center Tristan Thompson passed on the team's one-year, $6.8-million qualifying offer.

Thompson did not sign the qualifying offer by the 11:59 p.m. ET deadline Thursday, according to reports.

The Cavs have made different offers over the summer, going as high as $16 million in an average annual salary, according to ESPN. Thompson wants a three-year, $53-million max contract or a five-year deal for $94 million.

Thompson remains a restricted free agent, and negotiations between his representative, Rich Paul, and the Cavs will now continue. He has missed the start of training camp this week.

The 24-year-old Thompson averaged 8.5 points and 8.0 rebounds during the 2014-15 regular season when he was the Cavs' sixth man.

After Kevin Love was injured in the first round of the playoffs, Thompson started at power forward. In the NBA Finals against the Golden State Warriors, he averaged 11.6 points and 12.6 rebounds.

- - -

The Milwaukee Bucks and power forward John Henson agreed to a four-year, $44-million contract extension, according to reports.

The deal goes into effect starting in 2016-17 and will run through the 2019-20 season.

The 6-foot-11, 229-pound Henson averaged 7.0 points and 4.7 rebounds in 18.3 minutes per game for the Bucks last season. He also averaged 2.0 blocks over 67 games played to rank sixth in the league.

The 24-year-old Henson was the No. 14 overall pick in the 2012 NBA draft.

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