INDIANAPOLIS -- A 19-year old former employee opened fire at a FedEx Corp. facility here Thursday night, killing eight people and wounding several others before taking his own life, in the third deadly shooting of this scale in the U.S. in recent weeks.
Law-enforcement officials identified the suspect Friday as Brandon Hole, and said he was temporarily committed last year for mental-health problems. The Federal Bureau of Investigation also confiscated a gun from him last year. His employment at FedEx ended last year, police said.
In March 2020, the suspect's mother contacted law enforcement to report that he might try to commit "suicide by cop," said Paul Keenan, special agent in charge of the FBI's Indianapolis field office. The suspect was temporarily detained by police to determine whether he met the criteria to be involuntarily committed, and officials seized a shotgun.
Last April, he was interviewed by the FBI, and no racially motivated violent extremist ideology was identified during the course of the assessment and no criminal violation was found, but his shotgun wasn't returned, Mr. Keenan said.
Facebook said it took down two accounts connected with the suspect shortly after the shooting at the request of Indianapolis police, according to an internal Facebook memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Content on the accounts revealed no clear evidence of a motive for the attack, the memo stated. It focused mostly on the toy franchise and children's cartoon series "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic." An internet subculture of mostly young men interested in the show -- who call themselves "Bronies," a mashup of "bro" and "ponies" -- has existed for years.
A post timestamped 10:19 p.m., less than an hour before the shooting, featured an image of the cartoon pony named Applejack. "I hope that I can be with Applejack in the afterlife, my life has no meaning without her," the post said. "If there's no afterlife and she isn't real then my life never mattered anyway."
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