By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
The 36-year-old gunman who killed seven people in West Texas on Saturday called the FBI before his rampage began.
Seth Ator called the FBI national tip line after he was fired from him job and made “rambling statements about some of the atrocities that he felt that he had gone through,” FBI Special Agent Christopher Combs said at a news conference.
About 15 minutes later, Arto was driving his car and failed to use a turn signal, prompted a Texas state trooper, who was unaware of the FBI call, to try to pull over Ator. Ator responded by firing an AR-style rifle at the trooper, which triggered a police chase in which the gunman fired his weapon at passing cars and shopping plazas.
Ator hijacked a mail truck and killed a U.S. Postal Service employee.
Combs said the firing was not what the cause of Ator’s rage.
“He was on a long spiral of going down,” Combs said. “He didn’t wake up Saturday morning and walk into his company and then it happened. He went to that company in trouble.”
