EVERGREEN, Colo. — The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office said Thursday that the 16-year-old student who opened fire at Evergreen High School on Wednesday was "radicalized by some extremist network," but did not provide further details.
A report released Friday by the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, however, revealed more about the student's activity online in the months before he brought a revolver to school and fired several rounds.
Specifically, the report states the shooter was active on an online gore forum where two other school shooters had also been active before carrying out their attacks, both within the last year.
Since December, the shooter had been active on the forum where users watch videos of killings and violence, mixed in with content on white supremacism and antisemitism, the report found.
The gunman shot himself following Wednesday’s shooting at Evergreen High School in Jefferson County. He died of his injuries. It is still unclear how he selected his victims. The county was also the scene of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre that killed 14 people.
Evergreen
Evergreen High shooter, 16, had been 'radicalized,' JCSO says
TikTok accounts tied to the shooter contained white supremacist symbols, the ADL said, and the name of his most recent account included a reference to a popular white supremacist slogan. The account was unavailable Friday. TikTok said accounts associated with the gunman had been banned.
A spokesperson for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, Mark Techmeyer, declined to comment on the ADL's findings or discuss its investigation into the shooting.
The report notes that a few days before Wednesday's shooting, the gunman posted a TikTok video posing in a similar way to how the Wisconsin shooter posed before killing two people in December. He included a photo of the Wisconsin shooter in a post in which the gunman wore black T-shirt with “WRATH” written on the front.
He also posted videos showing how he had made the shirt that was like one worn by a gunman in the Columbine shooting, the ADL showed.
“There is a through-line between those attacks,” said Oren Segal, the ADL’s senior vice president of counter-extremism and intelligence. ”They’re telling us there is a through line because they are referencing each other."
Evergreen
Community holds vigil one day after Evergreen High School shooting
The shooter was also active on TikTok’s “True Crime Community,” where it says users have a fascination with mass murderers and serial killers, per the ADL report.
Some TikTok posts shared by the ADL show one user encouraging the 16-year-old gunman to be a “hero,” a term it says white supremacists use to refer to successfully ideologically motivated attackers.
The person also told the shooter to get a patch with a Nazi-era symbol that was worn by the men who carried out the 2019 attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the 2022 attack on a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
The gunman posted a photo of two patches that he had but said the Velcro on the back had fallen off.
“I'm gonna use stronger glue when I fix it,” he said.
The gunman's family could not be reached for comment. The Associated Press left a message at a telephone number associated with the house that police searched after the shooting.
The ADL's report later concludes that "[y]oung people can readily access extremist content and visual depictions of graphic violence that are celebrated by users of the platform, potentially desensitizing them to such content and increasing the risk of ideologically-motivated violence."
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