Lafayette Movie Theater Gunman Was A Law School Graduate

Which law school did the gunman attend?

Last night, on the evening that a jury found aggravating factors existed for convicted Colorado movie theater gunman James Eagan Holmes to incur the death penalty, another gunman launched a violent assault on a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana. The shooter entered a showing of Trainwreck and watched for about 20 minutes before he began to gun down moviegoers, killing two and wounding nine before he took his own life.

The shooter in last night’s attack was identified as John Russell Houser, 59, of Phenix City, Alabama. News reports have described him as a “drifter” with “few ties to the city.” He’d been living in a Motel 6 in Lafayette since the beginning of July, and is said to have been “estranged” from his family.

Some words that haven’t been used to describe Houser are “law school graduate,” but according to his LinkedIn profile, that’s exactly what he is. Houser seems to be a 1991 graduate of the unranked Faulkner University’s Thomas Goode Jones School of Law:

John Russell Houser’s name doesn’t appear in the Alabama Bar’s attorney registry.

We at Above the Law would like to extend our condolences and sympathies to the family, friends, and colleagues of those who were wounded and killed by John Russell Houser.

UPDATE (3:00 p.m.): A Faulkner spokesperson confirmed to AL.com that Houser graduated from the law school:

Pat Gregory, a spokesman for Faulkner University in Montgomery, said Houser enrolled in the college’s law school in 1994 and graduated in 1998, but the Alabama State Bar said it did not have record of House ever applying to take the bar exam.

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Lafayette theater shooter ID’d as John Russel Houser, ‘kind of a drifter’ with few ties to town [Times Picayune]
John Russell Houser Identified as Louisiana Movie Theater Shooter [NBC News]

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