The portrait of the 22-year-old man who allegedly shot up a mall in Clackamas, Oregon before killing himself and two others that friends paint is one of a happy-go-lucky joker who inexplicably changed in the week prior before the shooting.
"Hey what's up guys my names Jake and I'm an alcoholic... Lol just kidding," is the line that greets people who visited the Facebook page of Jacob Tyler Roberts, 22, who attended high school in Milwaukie, Oreg., and community college in Oregon City. "If you were to ask someone that knows me they would probably say that I am a pretty funny person that takes sarcasm to the max. I'm the kind of person that is going to do what I want."
The bio portrays Roberts as a self-professed "adrenaline junkie" who "hanging out with my friends and having a good time maybe get a little drunk every now and then."
The humor-laced message was a stark contrast to the image left behind by Roberts after he donned a hockey mask and used an AR-15 semiautomatic gun to spray fire into a mall in Clackamas County on Tuesday.
The gunfire from Roberts' gun killed Steven Forsyth, 45, and Cindy Ann Yuille, 54; a third victim Roberts shot, Kristina Shevchenko, 15, is in serious condition at a local hospital. Roberts shot himself to death before police could arrest him.
Roberts' friend and former classmate Jordan Morrison told The Huffington Post Wednesday that he believed a recent break-up between Roberts and his girlfriend could have pushed him over the edge.
"Maybe [the break-up] pushed him over the edge," Morrison said, adding that the last time he spoke with Roberts, his friend said he thought his girlfriend was pregnant. "Honestly, he wanted suicide by cops [is] what I think happened."
Hannah Patricia Sansburn, 20, Roberts' ex-girlfriend, told ABC News that she had seen a strange change in Roberts' behavior recently. According to Sansburn, Roberts had just quit his job at a sandwich shop--a job he professed to loving on his Facebook page--and sold all of his possessions while telling her that he planned to move to Hawaii.
Sansburg says that Roberts was scheduled to take a flight out on Saturday, but never made it, telling her that he got drunk.
"And then this happens ... it makes me think, was he even planning on going to Hawaii?" Sansburn says.
The couple had dated for nearly one year before ending their relationship over the summer, and while he never seemed the violent type, Sansburg said that he had seemed "numb" to her in the week before the shooting.
"Jake was never the violent type. He didn't go out of his way to try to hurt people or upset people. His main goal was to make you laugh, smile, make you feel comfortable. I never would have guessed him to do anything like this ever," she tells ABC.
Friends who knew Roberts had the same image of their friend in posts they left on Facebook.
Yelena Voznyuk, a friend of Roberts who was stunned by the news, did not condone his violent actions at the mall, but also believed that Roberts was probably suffering from mental illness, and that the shooting was not the accurate image of the friend that she remembered.
"Jake had a kind, genuine heart that made others laugh and had a good shoulder to cry one when life got tough. We can be mad at him, and spit in his direction, but deep down we ALL know that no one in their right mind wakes up deciding to end their life like that. We've all been in a dark room, fearing that light may not be on the other side of the door, but fortunately for all of us, who are still here, were able to be strong enough to break away from the evil. Jake was not evil, the tragic switch of our mental health is," Voznyuk wrote on her Facebook page.
Melissa A. Johnson, also shared those sentiment on Voznyuk's thread. "Jake was a beautiful soul. If you knew him, even for a minute, you know this," she wrote.
Rosalie DeDore, a friend of Roberts' stepfather, told the Oregonian that Roberts had experienced several setbacks in his life. Aside from breaking up with his girlfriend, Roberts had recently been evicted from his apartment. And while he had planned to go into the U.S. Navy after graduating Oregon City High School in 2008, a leg injury prevented Roberts from enlisting.
"After that, everything kind of fell apart for him," DeDore said.
Bobbi Bates, a neighbor across the street, told the Oregonian that on the day of the shooting, she saw Roberts rushing out with a guitar case in a hurry, "like he was late for something."
"He tore out of the house, threw the guitar case in the back of the car and tore off," she said.
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