Classmates, a suspected manifesto and troubling posts allegedly shared online by the gunman who opened fire at an Oregon supermarket before turning the gun on himself have painted a picture of a loner who was known for having a violent tilt among peers at the high school he graduated from in 2020.
Ethan Miller, 20, was identified as the suspect in the Safeway shooting that took place on Sunday evening and saw two people fatally shot, alongside the recently graduated gunman who police say was found dead in the produce aisle with an AR-15-style gun and a rifle nearby.
During a press conference on Monday, Bend Police Department confirmed that Miller carried out the shooting alone.
His victims were named as Glenn Edward Bennett, 84, and Donald Ray Surrett Jr, 66, a Safeway employee who tried “heroically” to disarm the shooter and probably saved the lives of other shoppers, Bend Police Department spokeswoman Sheila Miller said during the press conference.
In the wake of the most recent mass shooting to be carried out by a young white man in the US, former peers of the Mountain View High School alum began coming forward with disturbing descriptions of a man who some labelled as being the student who they saw as most likely to come to school with a gun and a vendetta.
“The person from our class most likely to be a school shooter,” said three ex-classmates about Miller in an interview with Ryan Haas from Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Isaac Thomas told The Associated Press that while in school, Miller was prone to “try[ing] to fight quite literally everybody”, and at one point even threatened to shoot him after a fight they had at school.
Before the massacre at the Forum Shopping Center in Bend, Miller had reportedly been living at an address in Fox Hollow Apartments, which are situated at the back entrance to the mall.
At around 7pm on Sunday, police responded to several 911 calls placed to the area after reports of a suspected active shooter.
Ms Miller, who is not related to the shooter, described during Monday’s press conference how the 20-year-old began his rampage in the parking lot of the complex before making his way into the west entrance of the Safeway grocery store where he shot and killed his first victim, Bend resident Glenn Edward Bennett.
He continued to fire on customers as he went aisle by aisle through the store, as law enforcement swarmed the area.
Safeway employee Donald Ray Surrett Jr, 66, confronted Miller and tried to wrestle the gun out of his hands. Police said the “heroic” Mr Surrett, who was shot and killed, had likely saved other’s lives.
The police spokeswoman said there was only four minutes between the first 911 call at 7.04pm and the time that they found Miller deceased.
“It’s a huge crime scene as you can imagine because of the parking lot,” Bend police spokeswoman Sheila Miller said.
A search of the gunman’s apartment found unspecified “digital devices” and more ammunition.
During Monday’s briefing, Police Chief Mike Krantz confirmed that authorities are in the midst of obtaining a search warrant for those devices and are aware of the “shooter’s writings” but declined to comment further on postings on several online platforms that appear to have been written by him in recent months.
According to former classmates of the gunman, he kept an online journal in which he had reportedly threatened to carry out an earlier mass shooting.
His so-called “manifesto”, posted to a blogging platform Wattpad, has since been taken down.
In an online diary titled “The Downward Spiral of Ethan Miller”, he allegedly wrote under the username Wrathofman22: “If you’re reading this than I’m definitely DEAD and have just committed a NATIONAL TRAGEDY.
In several of the posts shared on various social media platforms, the poster – who is yet to be confirmed as Miller by authorities but has been identified by ex-classmates as being the same person – disclosed his struggles with isolation and loneliness, much of which he attributes the lockdowns implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Miller graduated from Mountain View High School in 2020, according to online records, coinciding with Oregon Governor Kate Brown’s decision to close all public schools in the state from the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 until the end of the academic year.
In one of the suspected entries from the gunman shared in an online journal, he cites this as the moment when his mental health began to deteriorate, saying he couldn’t pull himself “out of that state”.
Another entry detailed how the poster, who cited the Columbine massacre as a source of inspiration, planned to model an attack on his own alma mater after the 1999 mass shooting and he intended to do so on 8 September.
That plan, the poster wrote, was moved up and location changed after the poster wrote that “the Rage has become uncontrollable.”
Posting on Facebook, former classmates of the gunman said he had been a loner at high school who had once trained in Mixed Martial Arts.
He also posted videos of himself firing a variety of weapons including AR-15s and what looked like a rocket launcher.
His Instagram and YouTube accounts have been deleted.
Police said his digital ramblings would form part of their investigation, but said they had no warnings of a possible mass shooting, and that Miller had no criminal record.
In addition to the firearms found by Miller’s dead body, which federal officials are investigating whether they were obtained legally, authorities also found three Molotov cocktails in his car along with a sawed-off shotgun and more ammunition in his apartment.
Though some former classmates expressed disbelief online that Miller could inflict such tragedy on the small community, located about 130 miles southeast of Salem, others confirmed they viewed his behaviour as a problem from as early as high school.
Mr Thomas, the ex-classmate of Miller’s, described to The Associated Press how he’d been suspended from school for a week after getting into a fight with the gunman.
Though Mr Thomas said he moved past the pair’s disagreement, Miller was not quite so easily convinced, and one time approached him after the initial fight to deliver a threat that in hindsight could be viewed with a more ominous lens.
“At one point he said he was going to shoot me and I was like, ‘Get over yourself’ because I didn’t think he had a gun, but I guess I was wrong,” the classmate said.
Several years after the fight, the pair ran into each other at the site of the scene of Sunday’s crime. Mr Thomas recalled Miller was working at the supermarket at the time and while he was returning carts in the parking lot, he once again threatened him.
“It was kind of crazy when I heard about it,” he said of the shooting. “But it makes sense that he chose Safeway because he worked there and he knew the layout.”
The Oregonian interviewed another classmate of Miller’s, who told the local news outlet how she’d once witnessed the gunman “violently beating” another student in the Bend high school’s hallway.
“Basically what I remember of him is he was super violent,” said 21-year-old Akela Haverlandt of the gunman who she added “would always get suspended” for fighting
Ms Haverlandt also added in her interview that Miller was friends with another controversial figure from the area, Keenan Harpole, the former Portland State University football star is accused of fatally shooting his girlfriend and freshman Amara Marluke at her apartment building near campus.
“He was always the talk of the week for getting into trouble,” added the 21-year-old about her former classmate.
Authorities said they were investigating his digital footprint, but said they had no warnings of a possible mass shooting.
With files from The Associated Press
