The gunman in a mass shooting Saturday in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Noah Harpham, worried that his father had joined a Satanic cult — posted a semi-coherent blog post and a YouTube video discussing his fears — and also recently announced on Twitter that he had joined the adult site Chaturbate, an online forum that advertises itself as devoted to “the act of masturbating while chatting online.”
But Harpham left few, if any, clues as to what motivated him to arm himself with a rifle as well as a revolver and shoot two women and one man, and then engaging police in a shootout in which he was killed.
I’m on chaturbate. Ptownblazer
—…. (@block_n_bard) October 31, 2015
A full Inquisitr report on the Halloween morning mass shooting in Colorado Springs can be read at this link .
But according to a book authored by his own mother, Heather Kopp, 33-year-old Noah Harpham was a recovering alcoholic who struggled with sobriety, and one point during a visit with his family “exploded” in drunken rage, sinking into a desperately dark mood that Kopp in the book described as “so toxic it was scary.”
In the 2013 book, Sober Mercies: How Love Caught Up With A Christian Drunk , Kopp decsribes her own experiences as an alcoholic who is also a self-proclaimed “Christian,” as well as going into detail about her son Noah’s extensive struggles.
On the dating site eHarmony, Noah Harpham also decsribed himself as a Christian, as well as a recovering alcoholic and “a big friendly giant.” Harpham stood 6’5? tall.
He was also a licensed insurance agent whose worst brush with the law prior to the bizarre and horrifying Colorado mass shooting was a 2003 speeding ticket, from when he lived in Oregon, according to an Associated Press report .
The two women killed by Harpham in the mass shooting, Jennifer Vasquez, 42, and Christina Baccus-Gallela, 34, were also recovering from addiction and were on the front porch of a local sobriety home for people in recovery when the gunman shot them.
Harpham lived in the same neighborhood as the sobriety home, which is owned by Alano Recovery Program and is a five-minute walk from where Harpham resided on North Prospect Street in Colorado Springs.
The gunman also killed a bicyclist, 35-year-old Andrew Myers, who according to witnesses, pleaded with Harpham not to shoot him — a plea which Harpham ignored. The bicyclist was shot on North Prospect Street, just feet from Harpham’s own front door.
Harpham’s final session on the Chaturbate site, according to his profile, would have take place just hours before he went on the mass shooting rampage.
But two days before the shooting spree, Harpham posted the first and only video in what he says in the recording is to be an ongoing blog questioning his father’s alleged involvement with an independent megachurch preacher, Bill Johnson of the California-based, 8,000-member Bethel Church is based.
In a related blog entry, also posted on October 29, Harpham rants about Johnson, saying that he believes the megachurch preacher is evil.
“My theory is that Pastor Bill Johnson is a Satanist intentionally keeping fundamental knowledge from you with the express purpose of controlling your mind and keeping you unaware of the Truth of your own sovereignty.”
The blog post is titled, “Is my Dad in a Cult? Even Worse, Is It Satanic?!”
In his video, Harpham — who appears agitated, pacing rapidly around what is presumably his apartment — says that he sent his father his criticisms of Johnson, not heard back from his father, Thomas Harpham.
Harpham’s landlord in the small house on Prospect Street said that the mass shooting gunman gave no indications that he was potentially violent.
“Knock me over with a feather — that guy was just a nice guy. I liked him,” said the landlord, who asked the Colorado Springs Gazette to withhold his name. “I couldn’t imagine for a second that he would even have a weapon. But what do I know?”
The Colorado mass shooting gunman reportedly attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and other members told the Gazette that Noah Harpham knew some of the people living at the Alano Recovery house, though whether Vaquez and Baccus-Gallela were among his acquaintances remains unclear.
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