A Colorado Springs man was identified Sunday as the student who blew himself up at the University of Oklahoma on Saturday during a football game.
Joel Henry Hinrichs III, 21, had been a National Merit Scholar at Wasson High School in Colorado Springs. He was majoring in mechanical engineering at the university and was a member of a math and science fraternity called The Triangle.
Hinrichs attached an explosive device to his body and sat on a bench near a packed football stadium in Norman on Saturday night, according to the FBI.
The device exploded at about 8 p.m. outside Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, where more than 84,000 people were watching the Oklahoma Sooners play Kansas State in a Big 12 conference game.
No one else was injured.
Hinrichs’ older sister, Berkeley Hinrichs, said from her home in Illinois that she last spoke to her brother eight months ago. She said he told her he was having trouble with the direction of his future.
“The last time I talked to him, he was not sure what he wanted to do with his life,” she said.
The youngest of five children – three boys and two girls – Hinrichs was creative and had always had an interest in engineering, his sister said.
When he was 6, he drew a wavy line representing a cloud in the sky and a triangle underneath it to represent a car battery.
“He wanted the car battery on the ground to make lightning,” she said. “He was disappointed with my dad because he wouldn’t give him an old car battery.”
Berkeley Hinrichs said it’s possible her brother was doing some sort of experiment and did not mean to kill himself.
However, a university official said Hinrichs had personal problems.
“We know that he has had what I would call emotional difficulties in the past. And as I said, this is an individual death. There is certainly no evidence at this point which points to any other kind of motivation other than his personal problems,” OU president David Boren told reporters.
Hinrichs’ father, Joel Henry Hinrichs Jr., a software engineer, said his son wanted to be an aerospace engineer.
“He was a very bright and obviously a very alone and very private individual,” Hinrichs said. “I’m dumbfounded by the action he took. When his supply of optimism ran out, that’s what he did.”
Hinrichs said his son easily made friends with his teachers growing up, but never with his peers. He was frustrated and unhappy and took a year off from college to try to cope with depression, he said.
Hinrichs said he had no inkling about what his son had planned.
He said the material his son had with him on the bench outside the stadium included hydrogen peroxide, which is very reactive. Authorities have not found a detonator, he said.
“I’m clinging to the notion that he really didn’t mean to do this,” Hinrichs said. “But he is not here to ask.”
Authorities have not found a suicide note, he said.
Meanwhile, law enforcement officers early Sunday evacuated part of the student apartment complex where Hinrichs lived.
About 40 people were told to leave and not to return for at least a day, Boren said.
“Obviously we’re not going to let them come back into the area unless we know it’s safe,” he said, “and we can’t have people going back into the area if it might interfere with the investigation.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Staff writer Felisa Cardona can be reached at 303-820-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com.
