The unemployed Alabama man who killed his mother and nine others on a vicious shooting rampage made a list of people who had done him wrong and stocked up on survivalist gear, officials said on Wednesday.
As investigators pieced together the carnage left by the worst shooting spree in the southern state’s history, a portrait began to emerge of a troubled, out-of-work loner with a penchant for shooting off guns in his backyard.
Michael McLendon, 28, gunned down his mother and her three dogs, set his house on fire and then tore off on a three-town trail of destruction that finally ended when he fired his gun into his mouth at a factory where he once worked.
The Alabama Bureau of Investigation said late on Wednesday there had been “very recent developments that we believe may direct us to a motive” for the grisly crimes.
Investigators examined the house where McLendon and his mother lived and found a notebook that contained a list of his former co-workers, as well as an account of grievances, Coffee Country District Attorney Gary McAliley said.
“On his chest of drawers was a list of people he worked with in Kelley Foods,” said McAliley, referring to a sausage factory where McLendon worked from July 2007 until he quit suddenly last week.
“And under that a list of things that people who he worked with had done wrong toward him, like ‘reported me for not wearing earplugs,’ and ‘so-and-so made me spend four hours cleaning out the meat grinders,’” the district attorney said.
McAliley said investigators had interviewed factory workers, none of whom were among the shooting victims, and had found it difficult to corroborate the shooter’s claims.
Neighbors and co-workers described McLendon as a quiet type whom few people knew well.
“Every neighbor we talked to either didn’t know him because he was so quiet and secluded, or if they did know him they said he is shy. The only gripe was that he was always in his backyard firing a weapon,” McAliley said.
A spokesman for Kelley Foods described him as a “reliable team member” who “just did his job.”
McAliley said the family’s economic woes were apparent — on the kitchen table was a letter informing his mother that she had been laid off from her job at a chicken processing plant.
The gunman had made “a list of several pages of bills that they had to pay, and it was obvious he was making notes on which order he wanted to pay,” McAliley said.
“I think economics could have been part of it. He was mad at the world somehow,” he said.
The Alabama Bureau of Investigation said it “has in its possession all evidence collected from the scene of the first event,” which according to the district attorney included a vast cache of military and survivalist gear.
Investigators also uncovered “20 to 40 ammunition boxes on the floor spread from his bedroom to the living room, a tremendous amount of medical supplies in military bags, many items a survivalist would use,” the district attorney said.
Sleeping bags, water-filled canteens, cooking utensils, bandages and a backpack filled with supplies were also found in the house, where McLendon left them before going out and killing neighbors and strangers alike.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate