Highland Park mass-shooter suspect posted antisemitic and racist content online, say reports
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- The man who killed seven people in the Fourth of July mass shooting posted racist and antisemitic material online.
- The police have not yet announced a motive for the shooting.
- Three of those killed in the mass shooting are believed to be Jewish.
The man who killed seven people during an Independence Day parade in a Chicago suburb posted racist and antisemitic material online, say reports.
The 21-year-old Highland Park suspected shooter has been charged with seven counts of first-degree murder, all carrying a life sentence without parole.
He also injured more than 30 people with a semi-automatic rifle he purchased legally.
The man wrote a number of posts on the true-crime fascination site Documenting Reality, The Times reports.
The paper details how the shooter's posts 10 days before the attack described Jews as "fire retardant," and also said, "I say we just get rid of the Blacks all together."
The young man also stated that he believes Asian people should "be gassed and washed."
Earlier, on June 25, he posted: "The math is all screwed. The logistics of 6m jews doesn't make sense but i'm just retarded,"reported the New York Post.
Highland Park is home to a substantial Jewish community. Three of those killed in the mass shooting are believed to be Jewish, said The Jewish Chronicle.
Among the seven people killed, was Jacki Sundheim, a Jewish synagogue worker. Stephen Strauss, 88, was also murdered in the attack.
Aiden McCarthy, the toddler left orphaned after both of his parents were killed in the attack, was the son of Kevin McCarthy, 37, and Russian Jew Irina McCarthy, 35.
A few weeks before the Highland Park Shooting the community north of Chicago was leafleted with antisemitic flyers.
The city's mayor, Nancy Rotering, said in a statement on April 28 that "several residents reported the littering of east Highland Park with repugnant anti-Semitic hate speech, on Yom Ha'Shoah (Day of Holocaust Remembrance) of all days."
"We've had a quite a few antisemitic incidents in Highland Park over the last few years. It could well have been an attack on our ... way of life," Cindy Isaacson said of the mass-shooting, per The Times.
However, police have not yet confirmed a motive for the shooting, and Chris Covelli, spokesperson for Lake County Major Crimes Task Force, said, "We have no information to suggest at this point it was racially motivated, motivated by religion or any other protected status."
The shooter posted a range of other disturbing content online, including YouTube videos including depictions of mass killings,