In the days since nine people (including the gunman) were shot and killed at a mall in Allen, Texas, investigators and journalists have been looking to trace the online footprint of the shooter, named by authorities as 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia.
The United States has a long and troubling history of mass shootings, with many of those who carry out such attacks leaving a trail of digital evidence. This case appears to be no different.
An Odnoklassniki (OK) account containing identification documents displaying Garcia’s name and date of birth, what appear to be diary entries and a declaration posted shortly before the shooting point to this being the primary social profile of the shooter.
The account also espoused far-right viewpoints and contained pictures of Garcia showing off at least two Nazi tattoos.
What follows is a breakdown of the content of the OK page, how we found it and how all available evidence points to it being tied to the shooter.
What is Odnoklassniki and how was this Profile Found?
Odnoklassniki is the second-largest Russian-language social network site behind VK.
The OK account in question was initially disclosed in a New York Times article on 8 May.
It is unclear how the investigators cited in the article learned about this account.
Finding the profile itself via OK’s search interface is simple enough. By starting with Garcia’s reported date of birth – 24 October 1989 – we can search for all men living in America born on that day. Only 62 results are returned. The third account appears to use a smiley face that bears a resemblance to Adolf Hitler as its profile picture. As we will see, this is the account of Mauricio Garcia.
We know that Garcia had accounts on YouTube and Facebook from his posts on OK, but they were frequently suspended. He had zero friends on his OK account, and was not in any groups. It is possible that he was using this account as a sort of personal diary where he would not be subject to content moderation. If he posted most of the content of this account – swastikas, threats of violence, etc. – on other mainstream social networks like Instagram or Facebook, it would be taken down quite quickly.
Garcia also posted countless photographs from his personal, handwritten diary on his OK page, although Bellingcat is not sharing these here so as not to further promote their content.
