Authorities investigate foreshadowing college shooting post
Authorities are investigating whether a post on an anonymous message board website is linked to the mass shooting at a community college in Oregon.
An anonymous post on the website 4chan Wednesday warned other users not to go to school Thursday in the pacific Northwest. Other posters responded, some egging on the poster and even offering advice. The post has since been removed, but a cached version is still available.
Charles Tendell, a certified ethical hacker and CEO of Azorian Cyber Security, wrote a blog post expressing his concern that more wasn’t done to prevent the shooting.
“These posts culminating in a real life event begs the questions: where are the internet mass surveillance systems that exist? Could federal agencies have released a terror alert for schools in the northwest and deployed additional officers? Could more have been done to prevent this?” Tendell wrote.
While Tendell admitted policing sites like 4chan would be difficult, he insisted more could be done to monitor concerning posts.
“It’s an information overload. How do you filter out the million sources of information the one piece of information that’s going to save you?” Tendell told KRDO NewsChannel 13. “If this information had been given to just one law enforcement liaison saying, ‘Hey, this is a credible threat. You should keep your eye out the next day or so.’ We would have had officers on alert all around the country.”
Tendell said his cyber security team saw the post on 4chan Wednesday and sent alerts to various law enforcement agencies, though he says they didn’t truly believe it was a credible threat.
“It was a matter of, ‘Here’s some information. Whether or not you take it seriously is up to you.’ And I know we’re not the only people who were sending it. There were other people out there sending it as well,” Tendell said.
It’s unclear whether the poster could be tracked through the anonymous website.
Officials identified the gunman as 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer and say he opened fire at Umpqua Community College Thursday, killing nine people and wounding seven others before dying during an exchange of gunfire with officers.
Social media profiles linked to Mercer suggested he was fascinated by the IRA, frustrated by traditional organized religion and tracked other mass shootings.
There didn’t seem to be many recent connections on the social media sites linked to Mercer, with his MySpace page just showing two friends. He appeared to have at least one online dating profile.
A blog post urged readers to watch the online footage of Vester Flanagan shooting two former colleagues on live TV in Virginia, while another lamented materialism as preventing spiritual development.
A MySpace page that appeared to belong to Mercer included several photos and graphics of the Irish Republican Army as well as a picture of Mercer holding a rifle.
KRDO NewsChannel 13 will have more on the warnings posted on social media and an interview with Charles Tendell on KRDO NewsChannel 13 at 6 p.m.
