On Friday, the parents of Elliot Rodger, knowing that something was very wrong, traveled frantically up the California 101 freeway to find him before he went on a multiple shooting and stabbing rampage that left him and six others dead.
According to the Daily News, Rodger family friend Simon Astaire said that the tragedy could have been averted if Lichin Rodger and her ex-husband Peter Rodger would have made their way to Isla Vista in Santa Barbara County in time to stop Elliot from slaughtering six UCSB students.
Unfortunately, according to Astaire, Lichin did not receive the email that her son had sent out to 25 people until 9:17 pm, 13 minutes before the massacre started. The emails included a 137-page manifesto called “My Twisted World: The story of Elliot Rodger” in which he expressed his intentions to “punish all females for the crime of depriving me of sex.” After reading the email, Lichin looked at her son’s YouTube page and viewed his “retribution” video.
According to Astaire, the timeline went as follows:
She opened up the email and… she can tell in a couple lines that there’s something seriously, seriously wrong… She gets hold of the YouTube video. She sends it immediately to her ex-husband. He is out to dinner with two friends and his wife, and he leaves dinner immediately and drives up to Santa Barbara. Meanwhile his mother called 911. And there’s a therapist… involved as well.
Astaire added that the parents didn’t know until late Friday that it was Elliott who had gunned down sorority sisters Katie Cooper, 22, and Veronika Weiss, 19.
The Los Angeles Times reported on Monday that gunshot victim Christopher Martinez’s father, Richard Martinez, is asking Peter Rodger to meet with him to help prevent this type of event from happening again. “I lost my son. He lost his son. We have that in common,” Richard exclaimed. “We want, if possible, that the deaths of our son and his son should mean something.”
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