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A spokeswoman revealed Monday that the guy who is suspected of killing eight people at a Texas shopping centre was discharged from the US Army less than three months after enlisting.
On Saturday afternoon, Mauricio Garcia, 33, opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon in the parking lot at Allen Premium Outlets north of Dallas. Police responded by shooting Garcia to death.
In a statement, US Army spokesperson Heather Hagan said: “Mauricio Garcia joined the regular Army in June 2008; he was terminated three months later without completing initial entry training.” She did not elaborate on the reason for his removal.
His application for a military occupational speciality was denied. He received no deployments or honours, Hagan continued.
According to reports from the US media and the independent Bellingcat investigative website, Garcia had a page on a Russian social media site where he displayed neo-Nazi and misogynistic beliefs and stated worries about his own mental health.
There were pictures on the profile of a shirtless torso with Nazi tattoos, but it wasn’t obvious if it was Garcia.
US law enforcement authorities declined to comment on the website, but one claimed media allegations of Garcia’s far-right sympathies were based on information from a document that had been leaked from the inquiry, which is being conducted by the Texas Department of Public Safety and the FBI.
According to a GoFundMe website, the Korean-American parents and their three-year-old boy were three of the three people slain in the incident.
Their six-year-old son William is the only survivor of this tragic incident after being discharged from the intensive care unit, the page stated.
A security guard, an engineer, two sisters in primary school, and others also perished, according to US media.
On Sunday, US President Joe Biden reiterated his plea for lawmakers to swiftly enact a national assault weapons ban as well as other gun safety measures, arguing that doing so is necessary to save lives.
The United States has the greatest rate of gun deaths of any developed nation—49,000 in 2021, up from 45,000 the year before—due to the fact that there are more firearms than people living there.
