More than a week after Peter Rodger, the father of Elliot Rodger, the young man behind the Isla Vista shootings met and hugged the father of one of the victims of the carnage, the senior Rodger is appearing on television once again. Rodger will be featured in an interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters on Friday.
Excerpts from the interview have been released already in which Peter Rodger is seen talking very candidly about the struggle he has been through after he woke up to the massacre by his son. He talks about the nightmare of realizing the fact that his son was a mass murderer, reports The Mirror .
“I wake up and it’s, slowly, the truth of what happened dawns on me. And you know, that is that my son was a mass murderer,” he tells Walters in the interview that would be telecast in a special edition of 20/20 on Friday.
Peter Rodger also adds that he and members of his family “didn’t see this coming at all.” A small clip from the interview has already been published and we have embedded it here.
While Peter Rodgers had appeared on TV a few times prior to this as well, this is the first exclusive interview with him by a major news network. In the past, The Inquisitr had reported about Elliot Rodger’s family being so deeply affected by the actions of their child that their speech were stuttered.
Peter Rodger happens to be a movie director who has in the past worked on several projects – including The Hunger Games. Shortly after the shootings, Elliot Rodger’s parents had issued a statement as well which read thus:
“We are crying in pain for the victims and their families. It breaks our heart on a level we didn’t think possible. The feeling of knowing that it was our son’s actions that caused the tragedy can only be described as Hell on earth.”
Elliot Rodger, now known as the Isla Vista shooter went on a shooting rampage on May 23, 2014 frustrated at his life. He had also uploaded series of videos in which he openly talked about his day of retribution. He had also typed out a long 141 page manifesto in which he justified his actions.
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