Dayton gunman’s dark online footprint reveals far-left leanings

Dayton killer Connor Betts’ online footprint provided a glimpse Tuesday into his dark thoughts and far-left political leanings — even as investigators worked to pin down a concrete motive for the massacre.

“Millenials have a message for the Joe Biden generation: hurry up and die,” read a message retweeted hours before the shooting by Twitter account @iamthespookster, believed to have belonged to Betts.

The account, yanked offline in the wake of the early Sunday bloodbath, included multiple selfies that strongly resemble the 24-year-old, and a bio section that reflected what few details have emerged of his personal life, including “he/him / anime fan / metalhead / leftist.”

It’s capped with a dire declaration: “I’m going to hell and I’m not coming back.”

The account fired off thousands of messages — including some supporting presidential hopeful senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and the sometimes violent Antifa, or anti-fascist, movement — since it was created in 2013, according to The Washington Post, which snagged over 3,000 of the tweets before the page was pulled.

They include embraces of far-left stances and politicians — including presidential-hopeful senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont — as well as the Antifa, or anti-fascist, protesters, sometimes known to resort to violent tactics.

“I want socialism, and i’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding,” reads one tweet from the account, according to Newsweek.

The account retweeted posts blasting federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as “monsters,” and referring to migrant detention centers along the southern border as “concentration camps” — echoing language recently used by firebrand New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“Cut the fences down. Slice ICE tires. Throw bolt cutters over the fences,” reads one message, encouraging people to actively resist the crackdown on illegal immigrants.

“Losing your personal information in a massive data breach is just a thing that happens now, like 110 degree days and regular mass shootings,” reads another message.

Yet another missive, at odds with the Twitter account’s stream of standard far-left talking points, encourages people to arm themselves.

“buy a gun and learn to use it responsibly,” it reads. “you may need to protect yourself.”

Betts’ attack came only about 13 hours after Patrick Crusius, 21, allegedly slaughtered 22 people in an El Paso, Texas Walmart, apparently motivated by far-right ideals, including a hatred of Hispanic immigrants.

Masked and body armor-clad, Betts opened fire on a popular Dayton nightlife district using an AR-15-style rifle around 1:05 a.m. Sunday.

He fatally shot nine fleeing innocents — including his 22-year-old sister, Megan — and wounded 14 more with gunfire before he was killed by police, just 30 seconds after his attack began.

Investigators said Tuesday that Betts embraced “very specific ideologies” ahead of his rampage, but refused to elaborate on the exact nature of those beliefs, stressing that the probe is in its infancy.

The onslaught was the culmination of years of troubling red flags, according to two of Betts’ former girlfriends.

“He would cry to me sometimes,” high-school love interest Lyndsi Doll told The Washington Post. “How he’s afraid of himself and afraid he was going to hurt someone one day. It’s haunting now.”

Caitlyn ‘Adelia’ Johnson, who went out with Betts from March through May, said that on their very first date he showed off his seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of mass shootings from across the country.

“Do you know tragedies from every city?” Johnson recalled texting Betts after he showed her footage of the slaughter at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue on their very first night out.

Betts admitted he knew “a fair bit of them,” a skill he played off as “totally normal,” Johnson told The Toledo Blade.

“That man who was so sweet to me and told me he loved me was a mass murderer,” wrote Johnson in a post on Medium. “I kissed a mass murderer.” 

With Post Wires

Credit: Source link

The post Dayton gunman’s dark online footprint reveals far-left leanings appeared first on Fox USA Live.

from Fox USA Live https://ift.tt/2Kl3L1e