Orlando Harris St Louis school shooter allowed to keep gun. Family asked police to remove AR-15 rifle days before school shooting as relatives say former student was undergoing mental health issues. As questions are raised as to how cops allowed teen to even keep gun?
How did cops even allow him to keep the gun? The family of the St. Louis high school mass shooter asked police for help removing the AR-15-style assault rifle from him nine days before Monday’s bloodbath — only for the weapon to somehow end up back in the 19 year old former student’s hands, police said. This despite the gunman undergoing mental health issues and having being committed.
On Oct. 15, police responded to a domestic disturbance call at 19-year-old Orlando Harris’ home, where his mother found the weapon and wanted it removed, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
Officers determined Harris was legally permitted to have the gun, but transferred it to a third party so it would not remain on the premises, officials said.
‘While it is not yet clear when or how the suspect came to be in possession of the firearm after this incident, we can confirm that the firearm involved in this incident is the firearm used in the shooting Monday,’ police Sgt. Charles Wall said in a statement on Wednesday.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is investigating to track the source of the rifle sale, Police Commissioner Michael Sack said, adding that it is difficult to track a gun’s ownership if it has been sold from person to person.
Committed in mental health services and yet cops still allowed troubled man to keep weapon- how and why?
Harris left a manifesto-like note in his car before storming Central Visual and Performing Arts High School with the rifle and at least 600 rounds of ammo Monday, killing physical education teacher Jean Kuczka, 61, and 15-year-old student Alexandria Bell.
Seven others were wounded in the bloodbath.
Sack also told reporters that Harris had been seeing mental health professionals and that his family had him committed several times.
Whenever the family ‘noticed him, kind of, stepping out of line … they always worked to try and get him back on his medication, back into therapy, whatever it is that he needed,’ he said.
‘Sometimes that’s not enough. Mental health is a difficult thing. It’s hard to tell when someone is violent and going to act out,’ Sack said.
‘I’ve got to give credit to the family — they made every effort that they felt they reasonably could. That’s why the mother is so heartbroken over the families that paid for his episode,’ he said.
It remained unclear how the gunman was able to obtain the weapon despite undergoing mental health issues and why police declined to confiscate the gun as a result of the gunman’s compromised state of mind.
The former student who may have sought to love, companionship or a girlfriend, and who bore resentment against his former school was taken out by responding cops before being able to unleash a possible large scale mass shooting at the school with his large cache. It continued to remain unclear how the 19 year old was able to amass a large cache of ammunition prior leading up to Monday’s school shooting.
