Isla Vista and Brussels Shootings

Drive-by shootings in a college town in Southern California the Friday night (at 9:34 pm) of May 23, 2014, left seven people dead, says Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown.

Brown said the suspected gunman was among the seven people killed in the incident, which occurred in Isla Vista (University of California-Santa Barbara). He said seven others suffered "gunshot wounds or traumatic injuries." One of those victims is said to have "life-threatening injuries." 

The sheriff reported nine different crime scenes.

Eyewitnesses described seeing a black BMW speeding through the streets, spraying bullets at people and various targets. A black BMW driven by 22-year-old SBCC student Elliot Rodger slammed into two other vehicles.

Witnesses identified the gunman as Elliot Rodger. Sheriff's department personnel are investigating a video in which a man identified as Rodger details plans for "retribution" and "revenge against humanity" prior to the shooting. Rodger had left a now-infamous youtube video recorded a few days before his rampage blaming young women who had apparently rejected his advances. Rodger took his own life with a bullet to the head as Sheriff's deputies closed in on his crashed car.

Elliot Oliver Robertson Rodger (July 24, 1991 – May 23, 2014) was confirmed by police to be the sole perpetrator of the killings.

Rodger was born in London, England, and moved to the United States when he was five years old. He was raised in Los Angeles. His mother is Li-Chin Rodger, a Malaysian research assistant for a film company, and his father is British filmmaker Peter Rodger, whose credits include working as a second unit assistant director for The Hunger Games. His stepmother is Moroccan actress Soumaya Akaaboune. His paternal grandfather was photojournalist George Rodger. He had a younger sister and a younger half-brother.

Rodger attended Crespi Carmelite High School, an all-male Catholic school in Encino, Los Angeles, and then Taft High School in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. He graduated from Independence Continuation High School in Lake Balboa, Los Angeles, in 2010. He attended Santa Barbara City College, writing in his manifesto that he dropped out of all his classes in February 2012. The school said he was no longer taking classes.
The first Isla Vista massacre on record occurred when UCSB freshman David Attias killed four students on the night of February 23, 2001 by slamming his car into several parked cars and pedestrians on the 6500 block of Sabado Tarde Road. Although initially charged with four counts of murder, four counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and five counts of felony driving under the influence, Attias was later found to be legally insane. 

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Meanwhile, Belgian officials say that at least three people have been killed in gunfire at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. (Update: A fourth person died in connection with the May 24 shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, the Belgian interior ministry said Friday, June 6, 2014.)

Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders, said he was "shocked by the murders committed at the Jewish Museum" on Saturday afternoon. He said he had seen the bodies of the victims.

Interior Minister Joelle Milquet said at least three were killed in the incident, and a Brussels fire department spokesman said one person was wounded.

No details were immediately available, but according to RTBF, a Belgian broadcasting company, a person with a backpack opened fire then fled.

Police have closed off the area around the museum, near the center of Brussels, and numerous ambulances were at the scene.

During the first week of June 2014, a suspect, Mehdi Nemmouche, was arrested in France. Nemmouche recently spent a year in Syria and is a radicalized Islamist, French officials said.