The Involuntary Commitment

Why wasn't Elliot Rodger

"5150 ed?"

By Lynn A. Granata

Just Last year, a young 22 year old college student the son of movie director Peter Rodger, went ballistic in the city of Ista Vista, CA. This is where he was attending the University of California Santa Barbara.

Elliot Rodger a biracial young man, unhappy he couldn't find a blonde haired blue eyed goddess.

Elliot was born in England. When he was six he emigrated to the United States with his parents and then settled in Los Angeles, CA. His father Peter wanted a career in Hollywood as a movie director. His mother Lin Chen is of Chinese Malaysian descent. She met Elliot's father while she was playing on the set of Raider's of the Lost Ark pt. 2 as an extra, as a nurse. 

They met and fell in love, got married. Then about a year later, Elliot Rodger was born. To make a long story short, Elliot grew up as a shy, small, child who needed counseling because it was discovered that he may have been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. That is a high functioning form of autism. Later on as he grew up, he began having problems making friends, of both genders in high school then later college.

He wanted a girlfriend, but had troubles getting a girl to notice him, as he constantly fretted over it. He was 22 and still a virgin. What Elliot didn't realize was that he was socially inept. Elliot didn't have friends of his own gender first of all. 

He lived a life of isolation playing games such as World of Warcraft on his computer. He was a very depressed lonely young man. At home things weren't working out all that well for him.  His father and mother divorced, and his father remarried soon after. 

Peter Elliot married a French actress and nudity model named Soumaya Akabourne. Rodger's relationship with Soumaya wasn't that good. His father decided it would do good for Elliot to get away from home, attend college and live near the campus in an apartment, which he eventually began to do and shared it with 3 other male roommates. 

Soumaya Akabourne Elliot's stepmother

Elliot was always comparing himself to other people. He wanted a girlfriend, but if someone else had one, he felt wasn't fair, he made fun of people of other races because they had what he felt he should have had instead.

Elliot started to become a walking time bomb. He was given a nice new BMW car by his mother. But he still wasn't happy. Elliot's mother, Lin Chen had sent him to a psychiatrist for his what was believed to be antisocial personality disorder and schizotypal tendencies.  His psychiatrist prescribed him the anti-psychotic medication risperdone. When he researched risperdone, Rodger refused to take it, stating in his 141 page manifesto that risperdone was the wrong medicine for him.

  He started filming himself and uploading his videos to You Tube. Once he started doing this, he clearly began showing signs of insanity. He would talk violently in these videos, send them to his parents. Then he ordered firearms through the mail. 

He began to write the 141 page manifesto. Once his parents caught wind of his plans, they became concerned and called the police. There were about 7 cops who showed up at his apartment for a welfare call. But when Elliot answered the door, he was polite to the officers, and they left, because Rodgers did a great job of convincing them that there was not a problem in the world. So they all left Elliot alone to his own devices.

Rodger as he appeared in his own self loathing video

If the police had intervened right at this time, it has been speculated that what was to come would have been prevented. Elliot was already known by the cops in that city as a mentally unstable individual. Rodger could have been taken to a psychiatric hospital emergency room and placed on a 72 hour hold. A psychiatric evaluation or a 5150 could have kept Rodger from killing innocent people on the streets of Ista Vista that night. 

Rodger killed his 3 roommates, then 2 sorority girls, injuring 23 more others, he also killed another young man, Michael Martinez, in a convenience store.  Rodger then went on a high speed case through the downtown area, but the cops couldn't stop him until they fired a round into the driver's side door of his black BMW. The round hit Rodger in the left hip, Rodger continued his chase, running over the poor pedestrians and bicyclists randomly on the street. By the time the police found Rodger's car, it was totaled and smashed through the windshield, and Rodger was found with a self inflicted bullet wound to the head. He had killed himself before the police got to his stopped car after it had done a plethora of property damage.