A woman signs a cross at a makeshift memorial for the victims of a mass shooting, May 8, 2023, in Allen, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
Eight shoppers, including three small children, were shot dead Saturday and seven others injured at a mall in Allen, Texas, by a 33-year-old with an AR-15 rifle who wore tactical gear and a clothing patch during the attack with the insignia RWDS, short for “Right Wing Death Squad.”
Texas had the most mass shootings of any state in 2022 (six) and has already had three in 2023, Washington Post reported.
Suspected gunman Mauricio Garcia was shot dead by a police officer who was responding to an unrelated call at the Allen Premium Outlets. Garcia worked as a security guard and did not have a serious criminal record. Officials searched his parents’ home and a nearby extended-stay motel where he had been living. Neighbors said the Garcia family had lived on the street for many years and were well-liked. He moved out of their home earlier this year.
The suspect had an account on a Russia-based social network seen by BBC News that includes pictures of Nazi swastikas and SS tattoos, posts glorifying Nazis, and rambling messages about violence. He also posted pictures from previous visits to the outlet mall in mid-April and hateful rhetoric online before the massacre targeting Jews, Black women and people of color.
Police found a patch on clothing on the dead shooter’s chest with the well-known white supremacist acronym for “Right Wing Death Squad,” according to a law enforcement official who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The suspect enlisted in the U.S. Army in June 2008, according to the U.S. Defense Department, but was “terminated three months later without completing initial entry training” due to “physical or mental conditions.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said his priority in responding to mass shootings is to address mental health crises, not gun regulations, Fox reported. “We’ve got to find a way in this country where we can once again reunite Americans as Americans and come together in one big family and, in that regard, find ways to reduce violence in our country,” Abbott said.
Two weeks ago, a Texas man with a gun allegedly killed five neighbors after they asked him to stop shooting his AR-15-style rifle so their baby could sleep. A year ago, a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, took the lives of 19 children and two teachers.
A small but increasingly visible number of far-right aggressors with Hispanic backgrounds are spreading racist, antisemitic messages, Axios reported in an article headlined “The rise of white nationalist Hispanics.“
Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist leader of a Christian-based group, held a conference recently in Orlando where U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) accepted an invitation to speak. Fuentes has defended Jim Crow-era segregation, criticized interracial marriage and questioned the Holocaust.
Cuban American Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, has been charged with conspiracy in connection to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Experts told Axios that far-right white supremacist extremism in the Latino community arises from Hispanic Americans who identify as white, the spread of online misinformation, and lingering anti-Black, antisemitic views among U.S. Latinos that are rarely openly discussed.
In Latin American and Caribbean countries where slavery was common, “white supremacy is alive and well,” said Tanya K. Hernández, a Fordham University law professor and author of the upcoming book, “Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias.”
