Family, faith crisis sparked weekend shooting in Colorado

A Colorado Springs, Colo., man killed three people Saturday morning with an AR-15 rifle before police shot him dead. As with other mass shooting events, this case has sparked speculation about whether the rampage represented a legislative failure, or a personal one.

Witnesses say Noah Harpham, 33, emerged from his Prospect Street home with a rifle and a pistol and shot a bicyclist, who first begged for his life. Harpham then turned onto Platte Avenue, walked half a mile, and shot two women on the front porch of an addiction recovery house. The Denver Post reported police killed Harpham after he shot at a cruiser.

Gun control advocates rushed to say Harpham’s rampage proves a need for tighter restrictions. On Sunday, a writer for Crooks and Liars dismissed mental illness as a possible cause for Harpham’s killing spree. She declared Harpham sane after reading his blog and eHarmony profile, which said he enjoyed studying Austrian (free-market) economics. Harpham’s landlord even expressed shock that his mild-mannered tenant would do something so terrible.

“Knock me over with a feather—that guy was just a nice guy,” the landlord, who declined to give his name, told The Gazette. “I liked him. … I couldn’t imagine for a second that he would even have a weapon. But what do I know?”

A closer reading of Harpham’s blog, which he created two days before the shooting, reveals a disturbed man whose troubles lie closer to home than to the state legislature.

The blog’s Thursday entry features a short video of a smiling Harpham introducing the text that follows—a partial transcription of a sermon by California Pentecostal megachurch pastor Bill Johnson, punctuated by Harpham’s scathing commentary. His lengthy, meandering post vented frustration toward Bethel Church congregants for blindly yielding to Johnson’s “mind control” techniques. He also listed church-related “miracles” that were impossible to fact-check, or even investigate.

Harpham claimed to have written the post for the benefit of Johnson’s audience—including Thomas Harpham, Noah’s father. But the post reflected his contempt for the “sheep … totally under the wolf’s sway.” He likened them to “spineless vegetables” and “cowards.” In one section typed in all caps, he role-played Johnson, saying the audience’s willful ignorance sapped the preacher’s challenge: “It’s less fun for him today because of this.”

A recovering alcoholic, Harpham’s troubles started years ago.

“Noah loved and hated all of us in equal measure,” wrote his mother, Heather Kopp, a freelance writer living in New York. Her book Sober mercies: How love caught up with a Christian Drunk describes her son’s long battle with addiction, and her own bout with alcoholism. In it, Kopp recalls her “introverted” son, whose mood was sometimes “so toxic it was scary,” turned to drugs and alcohol when he quit college and struggled “just to live and keep a job.” The family’s efforts to rehabilitate him earned mixed results.

As facts about Harpham continue to emerge, so surely will additional claims that tighter gun control laws might have prevented Saturday’s tragedy. But Harpham’s own words, and those of his mother, show his violent eruption began not with permissive gun laws, but with a deep personal and familial crisis.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.