A Hollywood director believes his son, Elliot Rodger, was the gunman in a shooting rampage at a Southern California college town that left seven people dead and several others injured Friday night, a family attorney said.
Attorney Alan Shifman told NBC News that the family of Peter Rodger, an assistant director on "The Hunger Games" film series, has not yet gone to Santa Barbara to identify his remains. The family is cooperating wih police and investigators, Shifman said.
Shifman also confirmed that family members were aware of and had contacted authorities several weeks ago about disturbing videos Rodger had posted to YouTube. In a video posted on YouTube On Friday, a man who identifies himself as Elliot Rodger details plans for "retribution." Those plans included shooting women at a UC Santa Barbara sorority house.
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Shifman told the Associated Press that police interviewed Rodger before the shooting and found him to be a "perfectly polite, kind and wonderful human."
Seven people are dead, including Rodger, and seven were injured after the rampage that ended with at least one shootout with Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department deputies and a crash. Rodger was found dead in the black BMW, according to authorities, from which witnesses said a spray of bullets was fired at nine locations.
A semi-automatic gun was recovered from the vehicle, authorities said.
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Sheriff's department personnel are investigating a video in which a man identified as Rodger sits in a car, detailing plans for "retribution" and "revenge against humanity" prior to the shooting.
"I'll take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you. You will finally see that I am in truth the superior one, the true alpha male," the man identified as Rodger says in the video.
The mass killing comes 13 years after a former UC Santa Barbara student drove his car through a crowd of people in Isla Vista, killing four. David Attias was convicted on four counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to a state mental hospital.
