Allen Premium Outlets shooter made white supremacist, Nazi posts on Russian social media
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Shooting in Allen, Texas
Here’s everything we know about the May 6, 2023 mass shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets mall.
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The man police say killed eight people and wounded seven others in a mass shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets mall on Saturday is believed to have posted neo-Nazi content on a Russian social media site and other profiles, according to law enforcement sources, researchers and screenshots.
His profile on Odnoklassniki, a social media network that’s popular in Russia, includes a date of birth that matches that of 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia and, according to media reports, includes posts like one about the motel he was staying in before the shooting.
The profile picture on the account is one of a smiling emoji styled to look like Hitler. An account must be created to view posts and other information on the profile, which the Star-Telegram was unable to do.
According to media reports and screenshots shared on other social media platforms like Twitter, Garcia made hate-filled posts about women, Jews and Black people and shared a picture of two tattoos he had, one of a swastika on the left side of his chest and one of the Nazi SS on his right upper arm. With the photos, he included the caption, “Here’s what I think about your diversity you (expletive) loser’s (sic).”
Garcia was Latino, and made posts such as a cartoon image showing a Latino child at a fork in a road, with one direction labeled “act black” and the other, “become a white supremacist.”
“I think I’ll take my chances with the white supremacist,” he wrote.
On April 16, photos of the Allen Premium Outlets were posted to the profile, showing that Garcia scouted the mall to see when it was busiest as he planned the shooting, according to screenshots. Other photos included one of a tactical vest with a “RWDS” patch on it, an acronym used by some hate groups to mean “Right Wing Death Squad,” along with a Texas flag with the “Punisher” skull and a black patch with the same insignia.
“We do know he had neo-Nazi ideation,” Texas DPS Regional Director Hank Sibley said about Garcia during a press conference Tuesday. “He had patches. He had tattoos.” Authorities previously told the Associated Press that they’d located white supremacist and Nazi posts on social media profiles believed to belong to Garcia.
The Odnoklassniki profile was littered with racist, antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ and anti-women posts, according to an analysis by researchers with the Anti-Defamation League.. In some he wrote about “lib commie” teachers and ended a post in which he expressed conspiracy theories about Jewish people controlling media by saying, “Heil Hitler.”
ADL researchers said they examined “a massive social media trove” that they can link to Garcia with a high degree of confidence. Their initial assessment revealed “a preoccupation with violence that manifests in a wide range of hate, including towards women and Jews, and includes images of SS bolt and swastika tattoos on Garcia’s arms and chest. These tattoos appear to be recently acquired, as they did not appear in images posted prior to April 22, 2023.”
According to the profile page, it was last logged into on Saturday, the day of the shooting.
Garcia shot and killed eight people and wounded seven others before he was killed by a police officer who was already at the mall responding to a different call, according to authorities.
Dashcam video showed Garcia get out of a vehicle in the parking lot with a AR-15 variant long rifle and immediately open fire at shoppers. Most of the victims were people of color, including a Korean-American mother, father and their two children., a Hispanic family of three, and two people from India who moved to Texas for work.
“Asian Texans for Justice calls on local law enforcement to exhaust all measures to determine whether the gunman was truly a lone actor or if he worked in concert with other individuals or organizations who aided and abetted these horrendous actions,” Asian Texans for Justice Executive Director Lily Trieu said in a statement.
Army officials confirmed Garcia was enlisted in the military for a short time before he was discharged for mental health concerns. A license in a Texas government database shows that Garcia worked as a security guard for three different companies and was certified as firearms proficient.
This story was originally published May 9, 2023 at 1:43 PM.
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