Step.- The Allen, Texas mall mass shooter has been identified as 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia, who investigators believe may have been a white supremacist or neo-Nazi following extremist ideologies, daylimail.com reported.
Garcia killed eight people, including children, before he himself was shot and killed at Allen Premium Outlets on May 6.
The killer fired more than 100 rounds during his rampage, and had more ammunition and weapons in his car, which he was seen leaving before the bloodbath.
Garcia, dressed in tactical gear and armed with an AR-15 and a pistol, opened fire outside an H&M store on a busy Saturday afternoon in Allen, Texas.
Ultimately, he was killed by a police officer who was on the scene from an unrelated call, but rushed over when he heard gunshots outside the store.
Garcia was a security guard, but it’s unclear if he worked at Allen Premium Outlets.
It is also believed that he was living in a motel at the time of the massacre. Authorities also searched that residence and found additional ammunition, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports.
According to the Washington Post, a patch the gunman wore on his chest alluded to his extremist ideologies, although no formal reason has been revealed.
The patch read ‘RWDS’, which is an acronym for ‘Right Wing Death Squads’.
This came after new audio revealed how the heroic officer made a frantic phone call begging his colleagues to join him on the scene, radioing: “I need everyone I’ve got.”
The officer bravely ran up to the active shooter, who was armed with 60 rounds and had shot more than a dozen people, and killed him.
About two minutes after first calling for backup, the officer said, “I shot him down.” Minutes later, another voice is heard on the radio saying: “We have victims. I need an ambulance”.
The FBI and police raided the shooter’s Dallas home just an hour after the massacre and requested a translator to speak to his family.
Neighbors said Garcia was often seen dressed in a security guard-type uniform, but he was “very quiet” and had “very unusual behavior.”
Dashcam video showed gunman Mauricio Garcia getting out of a car and shooting people on the sidewalk Saturday afternoon. More than three dozen shots were heard as the vehicle that was recording the video started up.
Garcia was using an AR-15-style weapon during the mass shooting and was dressed in full SWAT tactical gear.
Allen Fire Chief Jonathan Boyd confirmed that seven people died at the scene, including the gunman, with two other victims later dying at the hospital.
Three of the injured were in critical condition overnight and four were stable, Boyd said in an update Saturday night.
A Dallas-area medical group reported treating victims as young as five years old.
Investigators confirmed that they believe the shooter was working alone, but have yet to reveal any motive for the killings.
Fontayne Payton, 35, was at H&M when she heard the sound of gunshots through her headphones.
“I pray they weren’t children, but they looked like children,” she said.
The bodies were covered in white towels, slumped over bags on the floor. “It broke me when I went out to see that.”
Payton then saw the body of the dead shooter, which was the only one not covered, he recalled.
Another witness, Kimberly Blakey, said she and her 14-year-old daughter were among the crowd of people fleeing the parking lot after the shooting began.
She commented that the bullets rained down “non-stop”. Her car was shot at during her ordeal while she was trying to get away from it.
Blakey told CNN: “I told my daughter to get down. I could hear her start to pray.”
Another witness, Sheliza Ramlall, who was in the Nike store when the violence broke out, said: “I had the most horrible experience.” She was standing in line at the Nike store when all of a sudden people started screaming and running.
“People at the entrance saw the man with the gun out and raised the alarm. All of us in the line dropped to the ground and began to crawl looking for a hiding place while falling on each other. I crept behind the counter. At that point, I realized that we were just in sight and I thought that I needed to get away from the front,” he narrated.
“As I was looking towards the back of the store, I heard someone say ‘go to the back, go to the back’ and everyone started running towards that point. An employee opened the back door and let us out. We are standing on the side of the road, shaking, crying and hugging each other,” he commented.
“Not knowing where the gunman was or what was happening on the other side was terrifying, but I wanted to get out of there, so I left the crowd and started waving for cars to take me away,” he added. “An old lady stopped and I jumped in a panic. She started telling me about the shots she heard and led me to my car. I ran out of there with a racing heartbeat. I am thankful for our brave first responders who stopped the shooter and helped people to safety,” he concluded.
