Dayton: 5 Years Later!

Five years later, still more mass shootings. Dayton had a deadly one hours after one in El Paso.

One early Sunday morning in Dayton, Ohio, a gunman opened fire on people inside the Oregon District. The gunman within seconds massacred 9 people before the police stopped him.

This came on the cusp of another mass shooting in America.

The August 3 and August 4 massacres in El Paso and Dayton mark the fifth year.

Since the mass shootings, no major legislative action from Congress. Gov. Greg Abbott and Gov. Mike DeWine have bowed to the will of the National Rifle Association and Republican leaders.

Former president Donald J. Trump will not acknowledge the events that rattled his presidency. The Las Vegas mass shooting under his term will be the most deadliest mass shooting in the United States.

I strongly doubt Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) will acknowledge the Dayton tragedy. He is the Republican vice presidential nominee. 

The incident will be considered one of the worst in Ohio history. The 24-year-old shooter identified as Connor Betts, shot and killed nine people, including his brother, and wounded 17 others near the entrance of the Ned Peppers Bar in the Oregon District of Dayton, Ohio. Betts was fatally shot by responding police officers 32 seconds after the first shots were fired. A total of 27 people were taken to area hospitals. It is the deadliest mass shooting to occur in Ohio since the 1975 Easter Sunday Massacre.

A search of the shooter's home found evidence that showed an interest in violence and mass shootings and that he had expressed a desire to commit one. He considered himself a leftist and voiced his support for Antifa, a preliminary assessment did not indicate that Betts had a racial or political motive. The attack occurred just 13 hours after a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas.

Victims were shot quickly.

Police reported that all the fatalities occurred outside the bar on East 5th Street. The nine dead include six men and three women, six black and three white. Four of the dead were in their 20s, four more were in their 30s and one was 57. Two of the victims who died were also shot by police. An autopsy showed that a woman who was shot by Betts was already bleeding from a fatal gunshot wound when she was struck by two bullets that were fired by police. Had she not been suffering from fatal injuries, one of the bullets fired by police would not have been lethal. The second victim was shot by Betts multiple times and sustained a superficial gunshot wound from police. As a result of those findings, Montgomery County Coroner Dr. Kent Harshbarger ruled that the deaths were caused by Betts and were not the result of police gunfire.

Betts made online references about Satan and described himself as a leftist and antifa sympathizer. In the hours before he opened fire in Dayton, he "liked" a post in favor of gun control, and several concerning the El Paso shooting, including a tweet that called the El Paso shooter a "terrorist" and a "white supremacist". Betts was also known to have been in support of presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. An investigation concluded by the FBI in 2021 found that Betts "acted alone and was not directed by any organization or aligned to any specific ideological group," and that he "fantasized about mass shootings, serial killings, and murder-suicide for at least a decade".

The shooter was killed within seconds of trying to shoot clubgoers at Ned Peppers.

Two former high school classmates said Betts was suspended from Bellbrook High School after he made lists of other students he wanted to kill and rape. The "hit list" was discovered in 2010 and resulted in a police investigation. He was previously bullied and had planned to shoot up the school, a classmate said. His high school girlfriend said he complained of visual and auditory hallucinations and psychosis, and was afraid of developing schizophrenia.

The victims were:

• Beatrice Warren Curtis (known as Nicole Curtis), 36
• Derrick Fudge, 57
• Monica Brickhouse, 39
• Logan Turner, 30
• Saeed Saleh, 38
• Lois "Lola" Oglesby, 28
• Nicholas Cumer, 24
• Thomas McNichols (T.J. McNichols), 25
• Jordan Coffer (formerly Megan Betts), 22

Betts killed his transgender brother. He killed eight people within 30 seconds of him firing his semiautomatic rifle.

There were 9 people killed in Dayton at a popular bar. The gunman traveled from his elite suburb of Bellbrook to Dayton to massacre folks. He knew that Ned Peppers is the place where many people go to for entertainment. He knew that the right time to attack. 

The shooting happened at the peak of nightlife.

Expect more.

Now, five years later, a memorial will be dedicated today to those who lost their lives on that fateful day. The memorial includes metal structures shaped like seeds representing the 9 lives lost.

Entertainer Dave Chappelle, who lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio was touched by the community's efforts to heal from a mass shooting and tornado. He host a charity event in the Oregon District.

Chappelle along with Jon Stewart, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian West, Chance the Rapper, Stevie Wonder, Talib Kweli and Teyana Taylor were there to show solidarity with the community.

The Dayton massacre was one of the latest in a string of many other mass shootings where no one is safe. It happens in schools, places of worship, movie theaters, shopping malls, banks, convenience stores, workplaces, government facilities, festivals, clubs and the home.