LAFAYETTE, LOUISIANA - Emily Mann and her friend had come into the theater a bit late for the evening showing of "Trainwreck,'' so they quietly found seats near the top of the small theater. The 21-year-old didn't notice the man just a few seats down until 20 minutes into the movie when he got up and began firing into the crowd.
"You hear one loud shot and you're sure that's not what it is because it would never be that. And then you hear another and another and another, and you realize that those aren't just lights and sounds,'' said Mann, speaking to The Associated Press about the brutal killing in a Lafayette movie theater Thursday evening.
John Russell Houser, 59, stood up without a word and started shooting, leaving a horrific scene of blood, bullet holes, spent shell casings, and personal possessions like purses and wallets in a movie theater that was supposed to be a refuge from the stress of daily life.
Amid the tragedy, a tale of heroism emerged: high school English teacher Ali Martin, suffering from a gunshot to the kneecap, made her way to a fire alarm and pulled it. Police say she saved lives, alerting some 300 people in the giant multiplex that something wasn't right.
Police say Houser then tried to blend into the crowd heading outside as the alarm blared. But he turned back as police officers approached, reloading and firing into the crowd before killing himself with a single shot inside the theater, police said.
"This is such a senseless, tragic action,'' Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft said. "Why would you come here and do something like this?''
Investigators recovered Houser's journals, were studying his online postings and trying to reconstruct his movements to identify a motive and provide what Louisiana State Police Colonel Michael Edmonson called "some closure'' for the victims' families.
Craft said that Houser bought the weapon legally at a pawnshop in Phenix City, Alabama, last year, and that he had visited the theater more than once, perhaps to determine “whether there was anything that could be a soft target for him.''
He had been in Louisiana only since early July, staying in a Motel 6 room littered with wigs and disguises. His only known connection to Lafayette was an uncle who died there three decades ago.
Details quickly emerged about Houser's mental problems, prompting authorities in Louisiana and Alabama to bemoan the underfunding of mental health services in America.
Court records describe erratic behavior and threats of violence that led to a brief involuntary hospitalization in 2008 and a restraining order preventing Houser from approaching family members. Houser "has a history of mental health issues, i.e., manic depression and/or bipolar disorder,'' his estranged wife told the judge.
Educated in accounting and law, he owned bars in Georgia — including one where he flew a Nazi banner out front as an anti-government statement. He tried real estate in Phenix City. But Houser's own resume, posted online, says what he really loved to do was make provocative statements at local board meetings and in the media.
On an NBC television affiliate's call-in show in the 1990s, Houser encouraged violent responses to abortion and condemned working women, host Calvin Floyd recalled. He was an "angry man" who spoke opposite a Democrat and really lit up the phones, he added.
Houser wrote that he was a weekly guest for 60 episodes on "Rise and Shine WLTZ" in Columbus, Georgia, where he "invited political controversy on every one of them, and loved every minute of it.''
In recent years, Houser turned to right-wing extremist Internet message boards, where he praised Adolf Hitler and advised people not to underestimate "the power of the lone wolf," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Its hate-group watchdogs spotted Houser registering to meet with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke in 2005.
What prompted Houser to kill people Thursday night remains unknown.
He seemed like just another patron as he entered Lafayette's The Grand 16 theater, one of 25 people who bought tickets to the romantic comedy starring feminist jokester Amy Schumer as a boozing, promiscuous reporter.
Police believe he hoped to escape his deadly ambush before police closed in. Houser had swapped the license plates on his 1995 Lincoln Continental before parking it by the theater's exit door. He had stashed the keys atop one of its wheels.
Once inside, he sat by himself and gave others in the theater no reason for concern before he began shooting, firing first at two women who were sitting in front of him, then wounding nine other people.