White Supremacist suspect arrested for AZ shooting rampage
The news was breaking yesterday, and I watched as reports on the manhunt for the shooter trickled in. One person was dead, another in critical and others injured. The first descriptions that came in described him as white, male, head-shaved, with tattoos on his neck and face.
My first thought...white supremacist Neo-Nazi...but it was just a thought. No description of the tattoos. Lots of people have tattoos. Some white men are bald.
I kept checking the news. Finally one unconfirmed report mentioned a name of the suspect being sought. Ryan Giroux. I googled AZ mugshots and found that name in 5 seconds. Same guy? Perhaps.
I waited and continued to check back on the news. Prayed that he would be stopped quickly since he was leaving a trail of victims and reports on the scene showed panicked people in Mesa. Why post "Breaking" when it was being carried on all the media, but I continued to look for a confirmed name. Someone must have had an idea of the name or names that fit the description, and there were living witnesses.
I found one news report that had this headline: Ryan Giroux Identified As Phoenix Shooting Suspect, Reports Say He Is White Supremacist.
The other reports still were unconfirmed, and vague. Finally, there was a confirmed report that a suspect was in custody, and the name was Ryan Giroux. According to Reuters he was "subdued with a stun gun."
(Reuters) - A gunman opened fire inside a motel room in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa on Wednesday, killing a man and wounding two women before shooting three more people as he sought to elude an exhaustive manhunt that ended in his capture, police said. .... Officers using a stun gun subdued the suspected gunman, identified as Ryan Elliot Giroux, 41, at a vacant condominium where he had taken refuge, some four hours after the initial shooting, Mesa police spokesman Esteban Flores told reporters.
Most headlines still mentioned only his capture. I kept checking the Southern Poverty Law Center site, since they track hate groups. This morning they had this:
Suspect in Arizona Shooting Spree a White Supremacist Skinhead
The man reportedly arrested in the aftermath of a shooting spree in Mesa, Ariz., today sports tattoos that identify him as a neo-Nazi. What’s more, a local retired detective says he is a longtime white supremacist skinhead associated with major racist groups. ... The Arizona prison system’s mug shot of Giroux shows his face covered in white supremacist tattoos: where his shaven eyebrows used to be, the words “SKIN” and “HEAD”; on his left temple, the number “88,” which is neo-Nazi code for Heil Hitler (because H is the 8th letter of the alphabet); and on his chin, a Celtic cross, which for white supremacists represents the white race.
A retired Mesa Police detective who once infiltrated local skinhead groups, told Hatewatch that he knew Giroux from previous encounters, and that Giroux was a member of Hammerskin Nation, a notoriously violent racist skinhead group, and an associate of the Aryan Brotherhood, a national prison gang with a long list of murders to its credit. “He’s a violent guy,” aaid the source, who knew Giroux as a young skinhead in the 1990s and early 2000s and requested anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. “I think his time in prison contributed to that.”
Another report this morning "Ryan Giroux: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know" points out that the Sikh Temple shooter, Wade Michael Page, was a member of the same group.
I wonder how many news stories and programs will be discussing "violent white terrorists?"
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