Matthew Murray, the gunman who is believed to have shot and killed four people in Colorado, appeared to have acted out of revenge against Christians, police officials stated Tuesday.
Authorities believe Murray, 24, posted an anti-Christian message online on Sunday - the day of the shootings - in a language almost identical to the text of a manifesto written by one of the Columbine killers, Eric Harris.
"You Christians brought this on yourselves," Murray wrote, according to KUSA-TV in Denver. "Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don't care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you ... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world."
If the time on the posting is accurate, the diatribe was posted between the first shooting at 12:30am Sunday morning at a Youth With a Mission (YWAM) missionary training centre in Arvada and the second attack at 1:10pm that same day at New Life Church in Colorado Springs, according to KUSA.
The postings were removed after Sunday's killings from the unidentified website, which was designed for people who left evangelical religious groups. Other postings by Murray included lyrics by industrial rock band KMFDM.
"Our family cannot express the magnitude of our grief for the victims and families of this tragedy. On behalf of our family, and our son, we ask for forgiveness. We cannot understand why this has happened," Murray's uncle, Phil Abeyta, said in a statement as he fought back tears, according to The Associated Press.
Murray came from what neighbours have described as a "very, very religious" family. His 21-year-old brother, Christopher, is a student at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Murray, meanwhile, attended a home-based computer school and had worked at his computer for three to five hours a day for the past two years, investigators said.
In 2002, Murray had enrolled in a Discipleship Training School (DTS) at the YWAM Arvada training centre. DTS students partake in a 12-week lecture course followed by a 12-week field assignment, usually to another culture.
Murray neither completed the lecture phase nor participated in the field assignment. YWAM's USA International President John Dawson said programme directors felt "issues with Murray's health made it inappropriate" for him to participate.
Richard Werner, Murray's former roommate at the training centre, described Murray as a quiet and sarcastic person who made some bizarre comments.
At a YWAM Christmas festival in December 2002, Werner recalled Murray playing Marilyn Manson's "Sweet Dreams (are Made of This)" and Linkin Park's "One Step Closer" which included the lyrics "Cause I'm one step closer to the edge and I'm about to break".
"A lot of the kids really got scared about it," Werner told CNN. "We were just playing songs about Christmas, about God and friendship and then he came up with those songs."
Murray's parents were there and, with the centre's officials, they decided it would be best for him not to go out on a mission, according to CNN. Murray did not react angrily but was "always very calm", said Werner.
