Elliot Rodger

The 2014 Isla Vista killings were two misogynistic terror attacks in Isla Vista, California.

On the evening of Friday, May 23, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen others by gunshot, stabbing and vehicle ramming near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), before fatally shooting himself.

Rodger stabbed three men to death in his apartment, apparently one by one on their arrival.

About three hours later, he drove to a sorority house and, after failing to get inside, shot three women outside, two of whom died.

He next drove past a nearby deli and shot a male student inside to death.

He then began to drive through Isla Vista, shooting and wounding several pedestrians from his car and striking several others with his car.

He exchanged gunfire with police twice, and he was injured in the hip.

After his car crashed into a parked vehicle, he was found dead inside with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Before driving to the sorority house, Rodger uploaded a video to YouTube titled "Elliot Rodger's Retribution", in which he outlined his planned attack and his motives.

He explained that he wanted to punish women for rejecting him, and sexually active men because he envied them.

He also emailed a lengthy autobiographical manuscript to friends, his therapist and family members; the document appeared on the Internet and became widely known as his manifesto.

In it, he described his childhood, family conflicts, frustration over his inability to find a girlfriend, his hatred of women, his contempt for couples (particularly interracial couples) and his plans for what he described as "retribution".

In February 2020, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism at the Hague retroactively described the killings as an act of misogynist terrorism.

The US Secret Service describes it as "misogynistic extremism."

Elliot Rodger began his attacks at his apartment on Seville Road, where he killed three men by stabbing them multiple times: first he stabbed Weihan Wang, then Chen Hong, then George Chen.

Elliot's last victim in the apartment, George Chen, incurred a total of 94 stab wounds.

Bloodstains later found in the building's hallway suggest that Rodger had attacked one or more of his victims as they entered; a bloody bath towel and paper towels in the bathroom suggest Rodger had attempted to clean the hallway.

The men's positions suggested that each was killed separately as they entered.

Two of the victims were confirmed to be Rodger's roommates according to an apartment lease, while police were investigating whether the third was also a resident or visiting the apartment on the night of the killings.

After the stabbings, Rodger purchased coffee at a coffee shop.

At around 8:30 p.m., he was seen working on his laptop in his car in the parking lot of his apartment building.

He uploaded his "Retribution" video at 9:17 and sent his manifesto e-mail at 9:18.

After receiving a copy of the manifesto, Rodger's therapist phoned his mother, who – finding the "Retribution" video on Rodger's YouTube channel – contacted Rodger's father.

In separate cars, his parents left Los Angeles for Santa Barbara, calling Isla Vista police enroute.

Rodger drove to the Alpha Phi sorority house at Embarcadero del Norte and Segovia Road near UCSB, where he knocked on the front door for a few minutes.

After no one answered the door, he then began shooting people nearby.

Two women were killed and a third was injured.

Rodger then began driving again, firing into an unoccupied coffee shop on Pardall Road, then several times into a delicatessen; a man was struck seven times and killed.

Rodger drove south on Embarcadero del Norte on the wrong side of the street, striking a pedestrian and firing at two people on the sidewalk, missing them.

He shot a couple exiting a pizzeria and a female cyclist.

He drove south on El Embarcadero and shot at and missed a woman, turned east on Del Playa Drive, and made a U-turn to drive west.

He then exchanged fire with a sheriff's deputy responding to a telephone report, and struck two pedestrians.

Turning north on Camino del Sur, Rodger shot and wounded three people at Sabado Tarde Street, and struck a skateboarder and two cyclists with his car.

Turning east on Sabado Tarde, he struck another skateboarder with his car and shot two other men at the intersection with Camino Pescadero.

On Sabado Tarde near Little Acorn Park, Rodger exchanged gunfire with three sheriff's deputies, and was shot in the hip.

Pursued by police, he turned south a second time onto El Embarcadero, then west again on Del Playa.

He struck a cyclist, then crashed on the north sidewalk just east of the intersection of Del Playa and Camino Pescadero.

At 9:35, police found Rodger dead inside his car from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.

In the car were three pistols, knives, six empty ten-round magazines, and 548 rounds of unspent ammunition.

All six murder victims were students at UCSB.