An eighteen-year-old Colorado high school student has been arrested after going on a shooting rampage at his high school, murdering at least one an injuring seven. The student was found to have on his Facebook profile expressed a love of homosexuality and a hatred of Christians for opposing homosexuality according to a report:
Authorities have identified one of the two suspects in a shooting Tuesday at a public charter school in Colorado just eight miles from Columbine High School.
Devon Erickson, 18, has been held in the attack at STEM School Highlands Ranch in which seven students were injured and one killed, reported 9News, the Denver NBC news outlet.
Kevin Vaughan, an investigative reporter at 9News, said the identity had been confirmed by “multiple law enforcement sources.” Other Denver media outlets later reported similarly.
Both Mr. Erickson and the other suspect were students at STEM School.
“We do not have any other suspects, we have all the people who were involved,” Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock told reporters earlier in the day.
Neither Mr. Erickson nor his purported accomplice had previous criminal records or contact with the police as, for example, Parkland, Florida, shooter Nikolas Cruz did.
“We did not have them on any radar that we know of,” Sheriff Spurlock said.
According to News9, Mr. Erickson got a ticket for careless driving last year in Douglas County, but has no other criminal record.
The TV station reported that a home owned by James and Stephanie Erickson was being cordoned off with yellow police tape and searched Tuesday evening.
Mr. Erickson had said on social media, according to a report in Heavy.com, that he hated Christians for their teaching on homosexuality and his accounts suggested suggested he was not a fan of President Trump.
“You know what I hate? All these Christians who hate gays, yet in the bible, it says in Deuteronomy 17:12-13, if someone doesn’t do what their priest tells them to do, they are supposed to die. It has plenty of crazy stuff like that. But all they get out of it is ‘ewwwwww gays,’” he wrote on Facebook a couple years ago.
In 2016, his account shared a video of Seth Meyers attacking President Trump, and in 2015, “he shared an Occupy Democrats post praising then President Barack Obama,” according to Heavy.
On his Instagram page, Heavy reported, he frequently used hashtags such as #grunge #darkaesthetic #darkgrunge #softgrunge and #pastelgrunge and #alternative.
With one post, he wrote, “I’m covered in ink and addicted to pain.”
According to dispatch audio, one of the two suspects was wearing a Nirvana hoodie when taken into custody and the other was in a white hoodie with writing “all over it.”
He apparently was also a youth actor in local theater productions, Heavy reported.
In addition to the one reported fatality, an 18-year-old male, at least two victims were hospitalized in serious condition Tuesday evening. All the victims were students of high-school age; no staff or teachers were injured.
“We know that 2 individuals walked into the STEM School, got deep inside the school, and engaged students in two separate locations,” Sheriff Spurlock said, crediting the swift response of law enforcement for avoiding even worse carnage.
The Highlands Ranch school district put the charter school on lockdown and all its other schools under lockout.
According to the district, STEM School Highlands Ranch has 1,850 students at all K-12 grade levels — 550 elementary-aged, 700 at middle school age and 600 high schoolers. (source, source)