DENVER — The 16-year-old who shot and wounded two college students earlier than turning the gun on himself at his highschool in Evergreen, Colorado, left hints of his intentions on-line within the days main as much as the assault, the Anti-Defamation League stated.
The attacker reposted a photograph on X of a revolver and a field of ammunition two hours earlier than Sept. 10’s capturing, the ADL stated in a report launched Friday primarily based on analysis performed by its Heart on Extremism.
In line with the analysis, Desmond Holly had beforehand shared the photograph on his X account, and on TikTok he had posted photographs of a cranium masks, a ballistic vest and a knife with a Nordic rune drawn on it, the league’s evaluation reveals.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Workplace declined to remark Monday however stated final week the shooter was “radicalized by an extremist community.” It didn’t present particulars.
The 2 injured college students have been taken to a close-by hospital. One was launched and the opposite was in critical situation, the sheriff’s workplace stated.
Just a few days earlier than the capturing, the teenager posted footage on TikTok of himself carrying a black T-shirt with “WRATH” written throughout the chest in purple paint, the ADL stated.
Holly assembled his gear in a piecemeal vogue, the ADL stated, drawing inspiration from the tools utilized by earlier mass shooters.
For instance, Holly posted a now-deleted TikTok video by which he modeled a tactical helmet and a gasoline masks, utilizing background music from a Serbian folks tune that the 2019 Christchurch mosque shooter performed whereas livestreaming the New Zealand bloodbath.
The ADL stated the shooter was energetic on a violent gore website and spent “substantial quantities of time” in on-line areas that featured extremist ideologies and violent content material whereas amassing tactical gear to hold out his capturing. It didn’t describe the extremist ideologies.
The Evergreen shooter is amongst a number of mass shooters who’ve been energetic on social media earlier than finishing up their assaults, the ADL stated. He had an account on the gore discussion board WatchPeopleDie, the place he favored and commented on posts about American mass shootings, corresponding to these in Parkland, Florida, and Buffalo, New York, the group stated.
He appeared to have joined the positioning in December 2024, in the course of the month between college shootings at Considerable Life Christian college in Madison, Wisconsin, and Antioch Excessive Faculty in Nashville, Tennessee, the ADL stated.
The Evergreen shooter acquired tactical gear with extremist symbols, the ADL stated. It didn’t say what these extremist symbols have been. The shooter additionally posted content material emulating the previous Columbine Excessive Faculty shooters, who killed 14 individuals in 1999. Evergreen Excessive Faculty is about 37 miles from Columbine.
The Evergreen shooter’s TikTok accounts have been crammed with white supremacist symbolism and neo-Nazi code phrases, the ADL discovered.
On his earlier TikTok account, his profile photograph featured an image of the white supremacist gunman who killed 10 Black individuals at a Buffalo grocery store in 2022 being arrested.
His most up-to-date profile photograph was of the attacker who killed six individuals throughout a capturing rampage close to the College of California, Santa Barbara, in 2014, the ADL stated.
