A woman who went to high school with Betts recalled the hit-list.
“I know he made the list,” she said. “I’m not sure who the names were on there...He had a plan to shoot up the school.”
When she first heard about the shooting, she said Betts’ name came to her mind.
“I guessed it might’ve been him just from that list,” she said.
She added that Betts was bullied at the high school and that he seemed “pretty normal” after he “got some help from making list.”
Demoy Howell was a year behind Connor Betts at Bellbrook High School, where they were in Junior ROTC together.
“He was always a little bit of an oddball,” said Howell, who graduated in 2014. “He had a dark sense of humor - jokes about people dying. He would wear all black. I remember sensing a dark energy around him.”
He never had a problem with Betts, but remembers friends saying he made them feel threatened or uncomfortable. The rigor of the military program seemed to have a calming influence, as Betts didn’t seem to have many friends, he added.
“Even though we all knew he was kind of weird, I felt like the colonels kind of kept him together,” Howell said. “There was a lockdown one year and it was because he wrote something in the bathroom. Then he kind of fell off the face of the earth. I don’t remember him walking (at graduation).”
Later, Howell said, the two worked together at a fast-food restaurant.
“Generally there was no issue,” he said. “He kind of kept it together.”
Betts also worked at a gas station where Howell would sometimes stop in to grab a drink.
“He was normal there, too,” he said. “He kept on a professional face.”
He and his friends frequent the Oregon District where, authorities say, Betts opened fire overnight and left nine dead. Police officers in the area fatally shot Betts within a minute. After getting off work on Saturday night, Howell had decided against heading to Oregon. Hours later, he heard the news.
“I think this is less of a hate crime and more of an ‘I hate everybody’ crime,” Howell said. “I honestly feel more comfortable now knowing that he’s gone.”
[...]
A Bellbrook man who said he knew Betts for nearly two decades said that he knew him as a nice and quiet person.
“The Connor Betts that I know was a nice kid,” the man said. “The Connor Betts that I talked to I always got along with well.”
The pair rode the bus together and mainly talked about music and pop culture.
The man said that he hadn’t seen Betts since graduation, but that he spoke to him a about 10 months ago.
He said it was a casual conversation and wasn’t aware of any possible personal issues going on in Betts’ life.
While he didn’t know if Betts had any mental health issues, the man said he thought the shooting reinforced the need to talk openly about mental health.
“The biggest thing is to focus on mental health and to help people who are going through the problems and going through the struggles,” he said.
Dayton shooting: Oregon District suspect identified as Connor Betts
