Texas gunman Seth Ator was fired from job and called the police and FBI before killing seven people in shooting spree
- Ator was arrested in 2001 for a misdemeanour offence that would not have prevented him from legally purchasing firearms in Texas
The gunman who killed several people after a routine traffic stop in West Texas had just been fired from his job and called both police and the FBI before the shooting began, authorities said Monday.
Authorities said Ator killed seven people and injured at least 22 others Saturday before officers killed him outside a busy cinema in Odessa.
FBI special agent Christopher Combs said Ator “was on a long spiral down” before the shooting on the day he was fired. He went to work that day “in trouble,” Combs said. He said the place where Ator lived was “a strange residence” and that the condition reflected “what his mental state was going into this”.
Online court records show Ator was arrested in 2001 for a misdemeanour offence that would not have prevented him from legally purchasing firearms in Texas, although authorities have not said where Ator got the “AR style” weapon he used.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott tweeted Monday that “we must keep guns out of criminals’ hands” – words similar to his remarks that followed another mass shooting in El Paso on August 3, when he said firearms must be kept from “deranged killers”.