Brandon Scott Hole id as FedEx Indianapolis gunman id as worker, 19, fired last year who shot and killed eight then self. Was known to cops and had ‘death by cops suicide’ complex.
A former 19 year old ‘teen’ worker has been identified as the gunman who shot dead eight people at an Indianapolis FedEx warehouse facility before killing himself.
Brandon Scott Hole, of Indiana, stormed the FedEx operations center close to Indianapolis Airport on Thursday night where he killed eight people and injured seven others before turning the gun on himself while more than 100 people worked inside, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said in a press release.
FedEx have confirmed that Hole was a former employee who last worked for them in 2020. Hole’s family told Fox59 that he had previously been fired but it was not immediately clear when or what led to his dismissal.
Investigators searched Hole’s home in Indianapolis on Friday morning and seized evidence, including desktop computers and other electronic media. Sources say he was previously known to police and that his family had warned authorities of potential violence prior to the FedEx rampage.
Cops released the deceased shooting victims later Friday, identifying them as Matthew R. Alexander, 32; Samaria Blackwell, 19; Amarjeet Johal, 66; Jaswinder Kaur, 64; Jaswinder Singh, 68; Amarjit Skhon, 48; Karlie Smith, 19; and 74-year-old John Weisert. The names of surviving victims have not been released.
Suspect was known to cops and warned he might ‘commit suicide by cop’
A police report obtained by WTHR shows authorities were called to Hole’s home in March last year to detain him after he allegedly voiced suicidal ideas after buying a shotgun 24 hours earlier. In that incident, the report said police, who later took Hole to hospital, had ‘seized shotgun from dangerous person’.
FBI Indianapolis Special Agent in Charge Paul Keenan told a reporter for Fox59 that ‘the suspect’s mother contacted law enforcement to report he might try to commit ‘suicide by cop’.’
‘The suspect was placed on an immediate detention mental health temporary hold by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department,’ Keenan said.
‘Based on items observed in the suspect’s bedroom at that time, he was interviewed by the FBI in April 2020. No Racially Motivated Violent Extremism (RMVE) ideology was identified during the course of the assessment and no criminal violation was found.’
Keenan told Fox59 that ‘the shotgun was not returned to the suspect’ after the incident last March.
Hole’s stepsister, who did not want to be identified, described him as ‘isolated’ and said their father died by suicide in 2004, she told NewsNation.
‘We do have a lot of mental illness in our family and he never got the help that he needed,’ she said.
No known motive
Police have not publicly released a motive for the deadly rampage that started when Hole got out of his car in the FedEx parking lot and immediately opened fire with his rifle late on Thursday. He kept shooting as he made his way inside before killing himself as police arrived on the scene.
Four people were killed outside the building and another four inside. Several people were also wounded, including five who were taken to the hospital.
The eight victims had still not yet been publicly identified by Friday afternoon and the family members of the victims have spent hours awaiting word on their loved ones.
Of note, Police Chief Randal Taylor said that a ‘significant’ number of employees at the facility are members of the Sikh community.
In a statement posted by the FBI on Twitter, Keenan said: ‘Many of you have already asked what the motive of this shooting was, and with less than 12 hours since the shooting, it would be premature to speculate on the suspect’s motivations.’
Describing the rampage, Deputy police chief Craig McCartt said earlier on Friday that the carnage took just a couple of minutes.
Started shooting immediately after pulling out weapon from trunk of parked car
‘It did not last very long,’ he said.
‘The suspect came to the facility. He got out of his car and pretty quickly started some random shooting. There was no confrontation. He just started randomly shooting. He went into the facility for a brief period of time,’ he said.
McCartt said he doesn’t believe the gunman made it through a security area where employees are required to show ID and go through metal detectors.
FedEx is also understood to be reevaluating its policy of forbidding workers to carry smartphones in the wake of the shooting as a result of delayed initial 911 calls reporting the incident.
FedEx Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Frederick Smith called the shooting a ‘senseless act of violence.’
‘This is a devastating day, and words are hard to describe the emotions we all feel,’ he wrote in an email to employees.
Employees have since detailed their accounts of the rampage, with one employee Levi Miller telling NBC’s Today that he heard more than a dozen shots before he saw the hooded gunman screaming and firing.
‘I stand up, I see a man, a hooded figure,’ he said. ‘I was unable to see his face in detail. However, the man did have an AR in his hand, and he started shouting and then he started firing at random directions.’
Miller said he didn’t recognize the gunman but his colleagues had said he was a ‘well-known worker at this facility’. He said it was possible the gunman was trying to target the manager.
The fact that there have been 147 mass shootings (in which four or more people were shot) so far in 2021 is mind numbing and unacceptable…
— Dan Daley (@DanDaley) April 16, 2021
147 mass shootings in 105 days.
Only in America does a return to normal mean a return to daily mass shootings.
— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) April 16, 2021
Resistance to Gun Reform
Other eyewitness accounts also confirmed the gunman was armed with a rifle.
One eyewitnesses reported seeing a ‘man with a sub-machine gun or automatic rifle’ firing in the open before people started fleeing.
Two more eyewitnesses reported seeing a man getting a gun from the trunk of his car.
WRTV reports that workers hid under conveyor belts during the incident.
Timothy Boillat, another employee at the facility, told WISH-TV that he saw around 30 police cars arriving at the scene as he witnessed the shooting unfold.
Thursday night’s ‘episode’ was the latest in a recent string of mass shootings across the U.S. So far in 2021 alone, there had been 147 mass shooting incidents (involving four or more victims of gun violence) in the United States.
At the end of last month, four people, including a child, were shot dead in an office building in Orange County, California.
On March 22, 10 people were killed in a shooting at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado.
That came less than a week after a man shot and killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent, at spas in Atlanta, Georgia.
Nearly 40,000 people in the United States die each year from guns, more than half of those being suicides.
Despite distressing trends of mass shootings in the US and degrees of gun violence, ‘real efforts’ to address gun reform continue to be a moot point as the rest of the world looks on at what is now become a resigned ‘cost of living’ freedom in the US….
