Mauricio Garcia's Nazi Posts Before Texas Mall Shooting Raise Questions

Extremist posts by an account on Russian social media that has been linked to the suspect in the Texas mall shooting have sparked an online debate about the motivation for the attack.

Mauricio Garcia, 33, was named by authorities as having carried out the shooting on Saturday in Allen, a suburb northeast of Dallas, Texas, which left eight people dead and several others injured. Online researchers have since identified an account on OK.ru, believed to belong to the suspect, which shows tattoos of Nazi imagery and expresses a fascination with mass shootings.

Some hate watchdogs have said that the posts reveal the suspected shooter—who was killed by a police officer—to have an antisemitic and white supremacist ideology. Others, including right-wing commentators, have suggested the social media account raises more questions than it answers.

"This thing is suspect," Ian Miles Cheong, a conservative commentator, tweeted. "Why was he using a Russian social media site to write [what] was essentially a diary to zero followers?"

Investigators have yet to say what they believe was the motivation for the attack but federal agents have reviewed the online posts, an anonymous law enforcement source told the Associated Press.

Among those killed in the attack were a Korean American couple and their 3-year-old son, two elementary-age sisters, an engineer and a security guard.

Officials said that the shooter was wearing a patch that said "RWDS"—an acronym for "Right Wing Death Squad," a white supremacist phrase—when carrying out the shooting. An image of a vest with an "RWDS" patch was pictured on the social media account on April 21.

In a post from the social media account just before the shooting, uncovered by Aric Toler, a researcher at investigative journalism group Bellingcat, the author described viewing school shootings as "like a sport or a comedy" and said the suspect in a recent shooting at a school in Nashville, Tennessee had "a decent kill score." That attack left six dead including three nine-year-olds.

Images posted on the account in recent months include one of a torso, which is believed to be Garcia's, showing a swastika and SS tattoo, as well as people dressed in Nazi uniform, including several on January 1, 2022, which the author of the account described as "my kind of people."

The OK.ru account also pictured a pile of ammunition around the same time as images of the shopping mall in Allen, as well as a series of screen grabs from a phone on April 15 that suggested the owner had visited the mall and used Google to research when it would be busiest. The day before, it had posted images of a gun shop receipt from 2020 displaying Garcia's name.

"The Allen shooter was obviously a white supremacist/neo-Nazi," Toler tweeted on Monday. "He was basically announcing that he was going to do a mass shooting for months beforehand, and planned his target weeks in advance."

He added: "Everything I've seen shows that this is about the most textbook mass shooter you'll ever find, and he tells you about it every step of the way. He'll be a reference point for decades on mass shooters because he shared so much."

Toler said he was able to locate the account by searching for one belonging to someone in the U.S. with Garcia's birthdate. AP reported that it also displayed paperwork from a motel where Garcia is believed to have stayed before carrying out the shooting.

The Anti-Defamation League wrote on Monday that, having reviewed the posts, the suspect "was obsessed with violence and subscribed to a range of extremist ideologies, including antisemitism, violent misogyny and white supremacy." It added that its researchers had a "high degree of confidence" that the account belonged to Garcia.

However, Cheong questioned why in the social media posts the alleged shooter's Nazi tattoos appeared "fresh" and the photos did not display his head, in a tweet that had been viewed 2.3 million times as of 3:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday. He also queried why if the account "was made a few months ago, it had zero interactions."

"It's a Psyop and it's not even good," The Redheaded libertarian, who has contributed to Timcast, an outlet run by commentator Tim Pool, responded. Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, replied: "This gets weirder by the moment."

Other Twitter users also suggested the evidence pointed to a "psyop"—short for psychological operation, a method used by the U.S. military to influence behavior in individuals or groups believed to be useful for the nation. The term is often associated with allegations of state-sponsored terrorism by conspiracy theorists.

"They aren't even TRYING to make it look believable or legit," Jenn Cheng wrote. "Very sloppy work, and I don't believe it at all."

Newsweek approached the FBI via email for comment on Tuesday.

Toler said that the account's owner "didn't have any friends" on the platform, but said it had been used "like a personal diary." He contested the notion that the account was fake, stressing that it "has posts going back over a year, over a thousand photos, multiple photos of the ID cards and receipts addressed to the Allen shooter."