Face of Nation : Investigators are examining a screed believed to have been posted online by the suspect in Saturday’s fatal shooting at a Texas shopping mall an hour before the attack, senior law enforcement officials say.
Investigators are “reasonably confident” that the suspect, identified by police as Patrick Wood Crusius, 21, of Texas, posted the diatribe on the extremist online forum 8chan before the shooting. Terrorism experts warn that nothing should be taken at face value in the propaganda material left behind by hate crime suspects, which aim to provide fodder for social media pickup and mainstream media coverage.
The screed posted to the anonymous extremist message board railed against immigrants in Texas and pushed talking points about preserving European identity in America. The attack left at least 20 dead and 26 injured. The material is being considered a “nexus to a potential hate crime,” El Paso police Chief Greg Allen said at a press conference.
The writing presented itself as a low-cost, low preparation model for deadly attacks and envisioned the actions as part of a larger ideological war. The document was deleted from one of 8chan’s forums after the shooting began, but forum users archived the post, which contained a link to a PDF version.
The first reply to the posting was “hello FBI.” Last Saturday, a 19-year-old California man who left three dead at a Gilroy, California, garlic festival before killing himself left a note on Instagram before the attack telling users to read a specific 19th century white nationalist book.
Terrorism experts say that extremists who don’t know each other in real life are finding one another online and trying to “one up” the attacks. Law enforcement sources also say it is too soon to draw any conclusion from the posting about a possible motive in Saturday’s attack.
The thrust of the message feels familiar to those used in pamphlets spread by the KKK and white nationalists during the 1970s, said James Cavanaugh, a former special agent-in-charge with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, but given new reach in the digital age.
“These guys can reach out to any soul on the internet and poison them,” he said. “It’s digital hate.” Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein expressed a need to call out “white terrorism” in the country. “Killing random civilians to spread a political message is terrorism.
