INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – The former employee who shot dead eight people at a FedEx plant in Indianapolis legally purchased the two assault rifles, despite the red flag laws aimed at preventing it, police said.
A trail of the two guns found by investigators at the scene revealed that suspect Brandon Scott Hole, 19, of Indianapolis, legally purchased the guns in July and September last year, Indianapolis Metropolitan officials said. Police Department said Saturday.
IMPD did not share where Hole bought the guns, citing the ongoing investigation, but said Hole used both guns during the assault.
Deputy Chief of Police Craig McCartt said Hole started shooting randomly at people in the parking lot of the FedEx plant late Thursday.
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Paul Keenan, special agent charged with the FBI’s field office in Indianapolis, said agents questioned Hole last year after his mother called police to say her son would commit ‘suicide by a police officer’. He said the FBI was called after items were found in Hole’s bedroom, but he did not elaborate on what they were. He said agents found no evidence of a crime and that they did not view Hole as a race-driven ideology.
Police are near the scene in Indianapolis where several people were shot dead in a FedEx ground facility. (AP)
A police report obtained by The Associated Press shows officers seized a pump gun from Hole’s home after responding to the mother’s call. Keenan said the gun was never returned.
Indiana has a “red flag law” that allows police or courts to seize people who show signs of violence since 2005, when it became one of the first states to enact such a law after a police officer in Indianapolis was killed by a man. of which the weapons had to be returned despite hospitalization months in advance for an emergency evaluation of mental health.
The law is intended to prevent people from buying or possessing a firearm if they are found by a judge to be a ‘threatening risk’ to themselves or others.
According to the law, the authorities have two weeks after seizing someone’s weapon to argue in court that the person may not be allowed to possess a gun. Officials did not say whether a judge issued a red flag ruling in the Hole case.
INDIANAPOLIS SIKH COMMUNITY calls for gun reforms after FEDEX shooting
McCartt said Hole was a former FedEx employee and last worked for the company for 2020. The deputy police chief said he did not know why Hole left the job and whether he had ties to the workers in the facility. He said police had not yet discovered any motive for the shooting.
Investigators searched a Hole-related home in Indianapolis on Friday and seized evidence, including desktops and other electronic media, McCartt said.
Hole’s family said in a statement they were “so sorry for the pain and hurt” that his actions caused.
Members of Indianapolis’ close-knit Sikh community worked with city officials on Saturday to demand gun reforms while mourning the deaths of four Sikhs among the eight people killed.
Aasees Kaur, who represented the Sikh coalition, attended a vigil on Saturday night at a park in Indianapolis, along with the city mayor and other elected officials to demand action to prevent such attacks from happening again. happen.
“We need to support each other, not only in grief, but also in calling on our policy makers and elected officials to make meaningful changes,” Kaur said. “The time to act is not later, but now. We are far too many tragedies, too late, to do so.”
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The attack was a further blow to the Asian American community a month after authorities said six people of Asian descent were killed by a gunman in the Atlanta area amid ongoing attacks on Asian Americans during the coronavirus -pandemic.
About 90% of the workers in the FedEx warehouse near Indianapolis International Airport are members of the local Sikh community, police said Friday.
Satjeet Kaur, executive director of the Sikh coalition, said the entire community was traumatized by the “senseless” violence.
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“Although we do not yet know the motive of the shooter, he showed a facility known to the Sikh employees to be heavily populated,” Kaur said.
According to the coalition, there are between 8,000 and 10,000 Sikh Americans in Indiana. Members of the religion, which began in India in the 15th century, began to settle in Indiana more than 50 years ago.
The shooting is the deadliest incident of violence in the Sikh community in the US since 2012, when a white supremacist erupted in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, killing ten people and killing seven.