Race war obsessed Air Force sergeant ‘daubed extremist Boogaloo Boy phrases in blood after killing cop in ambush
AN AIR Force sergeant scrawled “Boogaloo Boys” phrases in blood after allegedly killing a sheriff’s deputy in an ambush.
Steve Carrillo, 32, was charged with 19 felonies after the shooting which left one dead and two injured near Santa Cruz, California.
Charges include murder, attempted murder, explosives charges and carjacking after Damon Gutzwiller, 38, died in the confrontation on Saturday, June 6.
Carrillo served at Travis Air Force Base and was a member of the 60th Security Forces Squadron.
Cops were ambushed as they responded to a 911 about a suspicious van having guns and bomb-making devices inside.
The officers followed the truck down a driveway into Carrillo’s home when they came under by attack.
Deputy Gutzwiller was shot and later died in hospital, while another deputy and a highway patrolman were wounded.
The attacker is also alleged to have thrown pipebombs at the cops before attempting to carjack a vehicle and flee.
Carrillo was shot during the confrontation, and allegedly scribbled phrases linked to the Boogaloo Boys online network in blood on a car, reports NBC.
He is claimed to have written “boog” and the phrase “I became unreasonable” just before cops detained him.
The Boogaloo Boys is a loose community which is unified by the belief of a coming second American Civil War – which some perceive as a race war.
The moniker is a reference to 1984 movie Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo – a frequently used internet meme when joking about unnecessary sequels.
Being so loosely organised, ideology often varies between individuals – but some have been linked to white supremacists and Neo-Nazis.
The second phrase scrawled in blood were words said by Marvin “Killdozer” Heemeyer, a man who knocked down buildings with a modified armored bulldozer over a zoning dispute in 2004.
He killed himself after his vehicle became stuck, and has since been touted as a hero in some Boogaloo groups online.
Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon University who tracks extremism, online, said: “Killdozer represents the intersection between the libertarian ideal of small government and the militant fantasy of the Boogaloo.”
Carrillo also wrote the phrase “stop the duopoly” on the car hood, an nonviolent political slogan often used by third party presidential candidates.
The FBI is now probing any possible link between Saturday’s bloodshed and the death David Patrick Underwood, a federal officer who was killed in a drive-by shooting in Oakland on May 29.
It was also revealed Carrillo’s wife Monika Leigh Scott Carrillo, who was also in the Air Force, was found dead in a hotel in May 2018 while stationed in South Carolina.
Her death was ruled a suicide following an investigation by the military and Sumter County Sheriff’s Office.
Carrillo’s online presence mostly included support for anti-police sentiments and pro-gun causes – common unifying factors of those who back the Boogaloo.
His profile picture showed George Washington and other American president wearing tactical fear and holding modern weapons.
The Boogaloo belief system appears to have been gaining momentum since late in 2019.
Supporters have since started appearing on the fringes of events such as gun rights rallies, anti-lockdown protests and demonstrations over the death of George Floyd.
They often appear to be heavily armed and wearing military fatigues over Hawaiian shirts – along with other badges and symbols associated with the far-right.
Investigative website Bellingcat explained the Hawaiian shirts had materialized as part of a contraction of the term “Boogaloo” into “Big Luau”.
The Department of Homeland Security mentioned the group in a May 27 memo.
It included FBI allegations that a “white supremacist extremist Telegram channel incited followers to engage in violence and start the ‘Boogaloo’ by shooting in a crowd”.
The loose ideology of the Boogaloo Boys is not explicitly white supremacist – with many having their ideology being centered on sentiments that are anti-government and anti-police.
Researchers at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies described the group as wanting to be seen as “anti-racist” but with an inescapable “white supremacist fringe”.
With varying belief systems tying together the group, the uniting factor seems to be accelerationism – a desire to collapse the US government through social unrest and trigger a civil war.
And then others would say the whole thing is one great big online joke steeped in various level of irony which was never meant to lead to direct action.
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Three suspected Boogaloo Boys have recently been arrested in after allegedly being found preparing Molotov cocktails at a Black Lives Matter protest in Las Vegas.
Earlier this year, Facebook took action and prohibited the term “Boogaloo” when used with “images or statements depicting armed violence”.
Paul Goldenberg, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, described the rise of the Boogaloo Boys as a “wake-up call” for potential homegrown terrorism.