Mass murderer Aaron Alexis carved the phrase “Better off this way” into the stock of his shotgun before embarking on his deadly shooting spree at the Washington Navy Yard, it was revealed on Wednesday.
Alexis also scratched the words “My ELF weapon” on the firearm he used during Monday’s rampage, in which the homicidal maniac killed 12 victims before being gunned down by cops, reported.
The information came from two law-enforcement sources who said officials don’t yet know what Alexis meant by the bizarre etchings, but are hoping they will help explain what prompted the bloodbath, according to the paper.
According to the report, ELF can stand for “extremely low frequency” and can refer to weather or communications eff🐼orts.
Meanwhile, chilling new details from eyewitnesses emerged about Alexis’ bloody rampage inside the Navy Yard’s Building 197.
The deranged gunman, the witnesses told the papওer, randomly fired at anyone he encountered as terrified workers hid under their desks or desperately barricaded themselves inside their offices.
Navy Capt. Mark Vandroff was meeting with his staf𒉰f when the bloodbath began.
“I heard the gunshots,” h📖e told the paper. “Someone screamed and said there was a shooter on the loose and to ‘Lock the🅠 doors! Lock the doors!’”
A p🐓erson triggered the fire alarm and some workers began running while others tried to hide, Vandroff said.
“People were fleeing into offices,” Vandroff said, and trying “to get another layer of p▨rotection” by barricading their doors with office furniture.
Teams of AR-15-toting DC cops were alrea🐼dy swarming the building, and would ultimately engage in repeated firefigh💃ts with Alexis, who would pick up two-semi-automatic handguns from base security guards during the assault.
The ma𝓰dman had concealed himself behind a wall on a fourth-floor atr♌ium that looked down on a common area crowded with workers and opened fire.
“He had thဣe advantage, and no one knew where he was,” an official told the paper. “He was moving. It was fish in a barrel.”
Greg Dade heard a “pop-pop” from his office 🦩on the second floor.
“We heard some rapid fire,” said Dade, a Hewlett-༺Packard employee working as a contractor at 𝓀the yard.
He and a co-worker left their office and tried to run — only to ♚𒅌hear a burst of gunfire nearby.
“We could smell the sulfur type of smell. You could just see it and ཧsmell it,” he said, adding that he and his colleague quickly fled back to their office. “What would you do, continue down the hall not knowing?”
Another worker sent Vandroff✤ a text sayi🌳ng he was hiding with colleagues in an office cubicle.
But Vandroff heard nothing from another office where his friend♑ Mike Arnold was working.
“We didn’t know if something bad — or not bad — happened to them,” Vandroff said, the p♍aper reported.
Capt. Christopher Mercer heard screaming, and the gunf♛ire was getting closer as Alex☂is methodically made his way through the building.
The gunman approached Arnold’s office, and blasted the veteran shipbuilder in the chꦓest with the s𒁃hotgun without uttering a single word.
Across the hallway, Mercer and three colleagues closed the door and ba📖rricaded themselves in as Alexis shot through the door.
“He set up camp right in front of my officꦜe,” Mercer told the paper. “He kept reloading and firing at cubicles. Later, when he came back, I could see his shadow through the glass pane in my door.”
The coldblooded psycho ultimately made his way down to the building’s lobby, where he shot a security guard dead, grabbed his 9 mm handgun and dumped the shot🗹gun on the floor.
With the heavily armed cops n✃ow flooding the building, he ran back up to the third floor, where Vandroff and the others were still barricaded 🐓in his office, and started firing the handgun.
“The♎re was one shot that was very close. There were bullet holes in the wall of the conference room where we were hiding,” Vandroff told the p⛦aper.
The en🅰d came when Alexis peeked around a partition on the third floor and was felled by a barrage o🔥f police bullets to the head.
Colleagues laterܫ told Vandroff that “Mike 🥀[Arnold] got hit,” one of the 12 people killed in the rampage, the paper reported.