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A gunman who opened fire at a Dallas immigration facility Wednesday allegedly left behind a bullet casing inscribed with the phrase “anti-ICE,” part of a recent trend of suspects in high-profile shootings signaling their possible motives through their ammunition.
FBI Director Kash Patel shared a picture of the casings, saying one was engraved and “shows an ideological motive” behind the attack. The incident followed the accused killer of Charlie Kirk inscribing gamer-inspired antifascist messaging on bullet casings and Luigi Mangione using words on his casings linked to health insurance companies.
The suspect in the Dallas incident, Joshua Jahn, 29, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after killing one detainee and critically injuring two others, the Department of Homeland Security said.
ANTI-ICE MESSAGE FOUND ON SHOOTER’S ROUNDS IN DEADLY ATTACK AT ICE FACILITY, FBI SAYS
While detainees were the victims, Jahn fired “indiscriminately” and was “motivated by a hatred for ICE,” the DHS said.
Tyler Robinson, 22, is facing murder charges in Utah and stands accused of assassinating Christian conservative activist Kirk during a speaking event at a college this month. Four bullet casings recovered with Robinson’s firearm contained phrases popular in gaming culture, including a direct mention of fascism and a possible reference to an antifascist Italian folk song.
Local and federal authorities have said Robinson had become more political in recent years and was inspired by a hatred for Kirk.
In Luigi Mangione’s case, evidence has shown the 27-year-old struggled with chronic back pain and had at some point documented frustrations with the health insurance industry, which prosecutors have tied to writing found on Mangione’s ammunition.
AFTER DALLAS ICE SHOOTING, VANCE SAYS THOSE WHO DENIGRATE LAW ENFORCEMENT CAN ‘GO STRAIGHT TO HELL’
Mangione stands accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, whose killing on a sidewalk in New York City was captured in chilling surveillance footage as Thompson entered a hotel for a conference. Bullets recovered at the crime scene contained three words popular with critics who say health insurers mishandle claims.
“In preparing for the crime, the defendant took the time to write the words ‘Deny,’ ‘Depose,’ and ‘Delay’ on the bullets he used — two of which were recovered at the scene of the murder as shell casings (because the bullets had been fired) and one of which was recovered as a live round,” prosecutors wrote in court papers.
The apparent pattern of young suspected killers marking their crimes with ideological messages on spent and unspent munitions comes as politically charged violence takes center stage in the national discourse.
A vast majority of voters in a recent Quinnipiac survey said the nation is in a “political crisis” and that political violence is a “very serious” issue. An Atlantic analysis of hundreds of terrorism incidents found that patterns in left-wing and right-wing attacks have fluctuated over three decades but that a rise in left-wing terrorism began when Trump was elected in 2016.
Attackers sending their politicized messages through writings is not new, though the writings have more commonly been known to crop up in various types of manifestos.
Last month, Robin Westman, 23, opened fire through the windows of a Catholic Church in Minneapolis during Mass, killing two children and injuring more than a dozen others before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Police identified videos that Westman may have posted that included writings using the Cyrillic alphabet. One video also showed firearms and magazines with names of past mass shooters, “Kill Donald Trump” and “Where is your God?” scrawled on them.
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