RIFLE, Colo. (AP) The man accused of shooting seven people, killing three, on a rampage through an RV park and a grocery store reportedly told a friend he planned to shoot some people and then himself.

Hours before the Tuesday night shooting, Mike Stagner, 42, showed up at The Sports Corner bar and made the threat casually to head bartender Ted Diaz, Jr. Diaz said he had known Stagner to make suicidal threats.

”I blew it off,” he told the Rocky Mountain News. ”He was always either going to jump off a bridge or shoot himself, but this morning I was shocked when I found out it was him.”

Earlier Tuesday, Stagner, who has a long criminal record, had been ranting about ”hellfire and damnation” at a liquor store near the scene of the shootings.

Owner Linda Trujillo said he bought a mini-bottle of whiskey and a Gatorade but she ran him off when he started yelling at passers-by.

Authorities have offered no motive for the shootings but were investigating whether they were racially motivated. Stagner is white and all his victims were all believed to be Hispanic.

The Denver Post reported that an unnamed official close to the investigation said Stagner had recently been treated at the Grand Junction Veterans Administration hospital for schizophrenia and he may have been drinking after he stopped taking his medication.

The rampage began when Juan Hernandez-Carillo was shot and killed as he talked on a pay phone outside City Market. Police said Stagner then walked across the parking lot toward the trailer park, shooting and critically wounding a 19-year-old woman who had just telephoned her mother in Mexico.

The woman, identified by witnesses as Anjelica Toscono, had been in the United States 22 days and planned to start a housekeeping job Wednesday.

When Stagner reached the trailer park, he fatally shot two unidentified men sitting outside a small mobile home and drinking beer.

After walking all the way through the park, Stagner shot three men, two in their car and one outside his home. He walked back out through the park, stopping only to reload.

As residents fled, Stagner crossed back to the supermarket parking lot, where police arrested him, city manager Selby Myers said.

On Wednesday evening, a Roman Catholic priest consecrated the ground where the deaths occurred as more than 100 people, white and Hispanic, looked on.

Members of Hernandez-Carillo’s family, who had driven from Taos, N.M., said he had come to Rifle from Ciudad Guerrero, Mexico and had been working for the Rocky Mountain Native Plants nursery.

Relatives said they were trying to get enough money to send his body back to Mexico to be buried.

”He was everybody’s friend,” daughter Maria Dolores Hernandez said.

His brother, Guadalupe Hernandez, did not think the shootings were racially motivated.

”I think he’s crazy,” he said.

According to law-enforcement records, Stagner, who stands 5-feet-10 inches and weighs 170 pounds, has a lengthy arrest record over the last 20 years in western Colorado. Charges include burglary, assault, possession of dangerous drugs and driving under the influence.

Authorities said they were trying to learn more about Stagner’s background, including whether he is married and employed.