Campbell Robertson, Mitch Smith and Rick Rojas

“It seems to just defy believability that he would shoot his own sister, but it’s also hard to believe he didn’t recognize that was his sister, so we just don’t know,” Biehl said.

Investigators are trying to learn more about the relationships among the suspect, identified by police as Connor Betts; his sister, Megan Betts; and the mutual friend, who is being treated for a gunshot wound in his lower torso. His name has not been released.

The three drove to the Oregon entertainment district in Dayton together Saturday night and then separated, although they remained in touch. Police have said there was no indication that the sister or mutual friend knew that Betts was armed.

The gunman fatally shot one person in an alleyway before turning his fire on his sister and their friend, police have said. At least 27 people were wounded, including 14 who were shot; the rest had cuts and injuries from the stampede of fleeing people.

Betts had purchased his AR-15-style rifle legally online from Texas and had it shipped to a gun store in or near Dayton, police said.

He had up to 250 rounds of ammunition with him and had fired at least 41 shots, Biehl said. Six officers fired a total of 65 rounds at the gunman, killing him as he tried to enter a bar, where many people had taken refuge when the shooting began.

Officials released a surveillance video from a camera outside the bar, showing scores of patrons fleeing, many of whom ducked into the bar for safety.

The chief said that, based on the information currently available, “we are not seeing any indication of race being a motive.”

Nine people were killed in Dayton. ‘I don’t know why I’m surprised,’ a mourner says.

At a vigil less than 24 hours after the shooting, the mood was a blend of sorrow and shock.

People, even strangers, grasped each other in long, tear-shuddered hugs. Old friends of those who died stood alongside those who had escaped gunfire.

“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” said Sara Quiñones, 44, a regular in the district, rubbing tears from her eyes. “This happens all the time.”

From a stage in the middle of the street, religious leaders prayed, doves were released and a singer led the crowd in “Amazing Grace.” When Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, a Republican, approached the microphone the mood shifted, with loud shouts imploring him to “Do something!” The group also chanted, “What do we want? Gun control!”

The mourners eventually quieted, and congressional representatives and other politicians followed. Candles were lit, and a benediction was delivered.

And then another mass shooting vigil came to an end.

“Over the last two years, and definitely the last year, it’s unfortunately been in the back of my mind: When will it come here?” said Clara Jackson, 56, a Dayton resident who would frequently go out in the Oregon District when she was younger. “This is sadly moving into a normal — it’s being normalized.”

The Dayton gunman made a ‘hit list’ in high school, a fellow student says.

When Betts was a student at Bellbrook High School, he was accused of making a “hit list” that threatened fellow students, most or all of them girls, with violence or sexual violence, former students said.

Ben Seitz, 25, recalled Betts as “a pretty dark kid” who was “definitely into some gruesome stuff.” Seitz, who was a year ahead of Betts in school, remembered him making inappropriate remarks about girls.

“He definitely stuck out,” Seitz said.

Betts became notorious at the school after news of the list circulated, said Seitz, whose girlfriend at the time was on that list.

“I was friends with a lot of the girls in my class” who were on the list, Seitz said. “They were obviously very, very scared.”

Another former Bellbrook student, Theo Gainey, recalled Betts being “arrested on the school bus” for making threats. Gainey, 25, who said he was on the bus when it happened, said that Betts had to leave school for the rest of that year. When he returned, “the threat thing followed him, and people didn’t want to hang out with him,” Gainey said.

Biehl of the Dayton police said Monday that he could not confirm reports of the “hit list,” and added that even if the reports prove to be true, he would be wary about making any connections to the shooting.

“I’m a little bit reluctant, even if there’s such evidence, to interpret it 10 years later as somehow, this is indicative of what happened yesterday,” he said.

Seitz, who moved away from Bellbrook, a suburb southeast of Dayton, soon after the incident, recalled a large police presence at the school after the list was discovered. He said he did not remember seeing Betts again. But when Seitz heard reports Sunday that his former classmate had been involved in the mass shooting, he said he was not especially surprised.

“One of my friends texted me that it was Connor Betts,” Seitz said. “I was like, ‘Oh, that kind of makes sense, unfortunately.’”

8chan has gone dark after a networking company cut it off.

8chan, the online message board where a hate-filled, anti-immigrant manifesto was posted minutes before the El Paso shooting, vanished from the internet Monday and remained offline several hours later, after a San Francisco company decided to stop providing vital network services to the site.

The forum went dark at about midnight in California. After the move was announced late Sunday by the company, Cloudflare, 8chan confirmed the change on Twitter and warned that an interruption in the site’s connectivity would probably follow.

“There might be some downtime in the next 24-48 hours while we find a solution (that includes our email so timely compliance with law enforcement requests may be affected),” 8chan wrote in a tweet.

The screed was posted minutes before the El Paso shooting and authorities said Sunday it was written by the suspected gunman. At least three mass shootings this year — including the mosque killings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the synagogue shooting in Poway, California — have been announced in advance on 8chan, which has become known as a forum for racist views.

The El Paso attack ‘underscores the continued threat’ of domestic terrorism, the FBI says.

Law enforcement officials said the massacre in El Paso was being investigated as a case of domestic terrorism and as a hate crime. In a statement Sunday, the FBI said that the attack “underscores the continued threat posed by domestic violence extremists and perpetrators of hate crimes.”

Federal officials said the bureau’s Domestic Terrorism-Hate Crimes Fusion Cell, which was formed earlier this year, was participating in the El Paso investigation. And the FBI’s Cincinnati’s office was helping the Dayton Police Department.

“We will bring the full resources of the F.B.I. to bear in the pursuit of justice for the victims of these crimes,” the bureau’s director, Christopher Wray, said in the statement.

In the statement, the agency said it remains concerned that “domestic violent extremists could become inspired by these and previous high-profile attacks to engage in similar acts of violence," and asked that people remain vigilant and report anything they deem suspicious to authorities.

Mexico has demanded protections for Mexicans in the United States.

Mexico demanded protections for Mexicans and Mexican Americans living in the United States and threatened legal action Sunday, a day after the shooting at an El Paso Walmart that left Mexican citizens among the dead and wounded.

Mexican authorities could seek to extradite the gunman on a terrorism charge and were planning legal action against the seller who provided the gunman with his weapon, said the foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard.

“We consider that the issue of arms is crucial,” he said

Ebrard also said the Mexican government would send a diplomatic note asking the United States to take a clear position against hate crimes.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/us/el-paso-dayton-shootings.html" id="5eae4664-b384-3fb2-ab2f-1543595ac0ea">The New York Times</a>.

Mass Shootings: Dayton Police Are Still Searching for a Motive

Richard Biehl, the Dayton, Ohio, police chief, said Monday morning that investigators were far from concluding what had motivated the suspected gunman in the Dayton attack to kill his sister, injure their mutual friend, and fatally shoot eight others outside a bar, before he was killed by police.

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Campbell Robertson, Mitch Smith and Rick Rojas

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Mass Shootings: Dayton Police Are Still Searching for a Motive