Dayton mass shooter: Self-described leftist, avid supporter of Antifa and Communism - UPDATES

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Mon, 05 Aug 2019 12:06 UTC

It has been a tumultuous weekend for the country, which suffered two consecutive mass shootings over the last 48 hours in both El Paso and Dayton.

And while the media was eager to quickly expose the El Paso shooter as a right-wing extremist with the implication that he is merely following Trump's belligerent rhetoric, only few details had emerged about the Dayton, Ohio shooter although we certainly understand why the mainstream media may not have rushed to make these alleged details public - because according to Heavy.com, the Dayton shooter was an Elizabeth Warren (and Bernie Sanders) supporter who advocated for socialism, communism and supported Antifa.

The shooter, Connor Betts, was 24 and from Bellbrook, Ohio. His alleged social media biography started to emerge late on Sunday night, with his Twitter page stating that he described himself as:

"he/him / anime fan / metalhead / leftist / i'm going to hell and i'm not coming back."

On his alleged Twitter account, he promoted Antifa and the Democratic Socialists of America:

More tweets from the suspect promoting Antifa and accounts that appear to be pro-Antifa

He also appeared to be critical of President Trump's immigration policy, using the "concentration camp" rhetoric made popular by AOC:

The account called an Antifa terrorist who attacked an ICE facility a "martyr":

...and also retweeted pro communist Tweets:

The account wrote that he would "happily vote for Democrat Elizabeth Warren, praised Satan, was upset about the 2016 presidential election results, and added, 'I want socialism, and i'll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding.'"

He also allegedly retweeted a post about "rounding up hostages" in a video game before "shoot[ing] them all in the head":

Other posts alluded to violence with firearms:

"This is America: Guns on every corner, guns in every house, no freedom but that to kill," he wrote in December 2018. And, "'Tis! The pistol is a Beretta 93R, called the REK7 in BO4. Do love me some guns!" He also wrote, "Hammer, brick, gun." On Feb. 14, 2018, he tweeted this at Sen. Rob Portman: "@robportman hey rob. How much did they pay you to look the other way? 17 kids are dead. If not now, when?" That was the date of the mass shooting at a school in Parkland, Florida.

On Nov. 2, 2018, the account wrote: "Vote blue for gods sake." On the date of Republican Sen. John McCain's death, it said "F*ck John McCain." After Trump's 2016 election, he allegedly Tweeted "This is bad".

According to his former high school classmates, he was "a bully who liked to scare women."

Heavy.com claimed they had verified his Twitter handle "through multiple verification factors, including a matching tattoo on both a page selfie and prominent news outlets' pictures of Connor Betts; several family linkages to the page; similar photos, including of him and the family dog, on the page and family members' verified accounts; and references to college and growing up in Ohio and Dayton."

By Monday morning, Twitter had suspended the account:

Comment: See also : 9 killed as gunman opens fire in Dayton bar district, hours after Texas massacre - UPDATE: 10 dead

More information is coming out about the Dayton shooter, Conner Betts. Those who profess to have known him in school describe him as a bully and a stalker. The Dayton Daily News reports:

The shooting suspect has been identified as Connor Betts, 24, of Bellbrook, government sources confirmed.

Chris Baker, who just resigned this summer after 14 years as Bellbrook High School principal, was asked about Betts' time as a Bellbrook student.

Asked about reports that, while a Bellbrook student, Betts was suspended for causing a lockdown by writing a "hit-list" on a bathroom wall, Baker said, "I would not dispute that information, but I don't want to get involved any more than just making that comment."

A woman who went to high school with Betts recalled the hit-list.

"I know he made the list," she said. "I'm not sure who the names were on there...He had a plan to shoot up the school."

When she first heard about the shooting, she said Betts' name came to her mind.

"I guessed it might've been him just from that list," she said.

She added that Betts was bullied at the high school and that he seemed "pretty normal" after he "got some help from making list."

Demoy Howell was a year behind Connor Betts at Bellbrook High School, where they were in Junior ROTC together.

"He was always a little bit of an oddball," said Howell, who graduated in 2014. "He had a dark sense of humor - jokes about people dying. He would wear all black. I remember sensing a dark energy around him."

He never had a problem with Betts, but remembers friends saying he made them feel threatened or uncomfortable. The rigor of the military program seemed to have a calming influence, as Betts didn't seem to have many friends, he added.

"Even though we all knew he was kind of weird, I felt like the colonels kind of kept him together," Howell said. "There was a lockdown one year and it was because he wrote something in the bathroom. Then he kind of fell off the face of the earth. I don't remember him walking (at graduation)."

Later, Howell said, the two worked together at a fast-food restaurant.

"Generally there was no issue," he said. "He kind of kept it together."

Betts also worked at a gas station where Howell would sometimes stop in to grab a drink.

"He was normal there, too," he said. "He kept on a professional face."

The Los Angeles Times adds:

High school classmates of the gunman who authorities say killed nine people early Sunday in Dayton say he was suspended for compiling a "hit list" of those he wanted to kill and a "rape list" of girls he wanted to sexually assault.

Both former classmates told the Associated Press that Betts was suspended during their junior year at suburban Bellbrook High School after a hit list was found scrawled in a school bathroom. That followed an earlier suspension after Betts came to school with a list of female students he wanted to sexually assault, according to the two classmates, a man and a woman who are both now 24 and spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern they might face harassment.

"There was a kill list and a rape list, and my name was on the rape list," the female classmate said.

The woman, a former cheerleader, said she didn't really know Betts and was surprised when a police officer called her cellphone during her freshman year to tell her that her name was included on a list of potential targets.

A Twitter user collected some posts purporting to be former classmates of Betts, disputing the "bullied at school" narrative. Shades of the Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz.

• Parkland school gunman was considered such a threat he was searched every morning, yet parents weren't informed of the danger
• Another ball dropped: New report shows no follow up to recommendations of forced psych admission for Parkland shooter
• If cops were doing their jobs the Parkland school shooter could have faced charges before killing spree, say experts

Some of the individual tweets are below:

© Ben Seitz/Twitter

And as seems usual, talk of a second shooter is damped down, without accounting for the efficiency of the carnage.

"Shots fired! Shots fired!" an officer shouts in archived scanner audio, which you can listen to here. The dispatcher indicates the shooting occurred in the Oregon District. At one point, an officer said on the scanner that it looked like 9 to 10 people were shot.

"We got shots fired. We got multiple people down. We need multiple medics...We need to shut the whole street down....We think there's one shooter. He's down. We're looking for a second shooter," says an officer in the audio. (There are often incorrect reports of multiple shooters in the early moments of active shooter incidents, and it was clear that officers were trying to get a handle on a chaotic situation with possibly conflicting early information on that point. As noted, Dayton police later said they believe there is probably only one shooter.)

Language warning

Update (Aug. 6): In line with the statements as to Betts's character above, there's this:

Betts was also in a "Pornogrind" Band that, according to Vice News, "released songs about raping and killing women." Vice called it the "extreme metal music scene." The bands he performed in sometimes were called Menstrual Munchies and Putrid Liquid, and the songs contained vile names like "6 Ways of Female Butchery" and "Preeteen Daughter Pu$$y Slaughter," Vice reported.

A woman he briefly dated, Caitlyn "Adelia" Johnson, told The Toledo Blade that he took her to gun ranges and showed her body camera video footage from a mass shooting, causing her to break off the relationship by text message. She also told the newspaper that Betts confided that he was bipolar and had Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
...
The woman he briefly dated also told The Toledo Blade that Betts had bragged that he knew a lot about mass shootings. She shared a text message exchange with the newspaper, in which she asked, "Do you know tragedies from every city?"

"A fair bit of them! :D [smiley face]," he responded. She told the newspaper he was charming and outgoing, but said he told her he had put a gun in his mouth before and he once called her drunk and said he wanted "to hurt a bunch of people."

Johnson published an account of her 'polyamorous' relationship (spring of 2019) with Betts on Medium. He allegedly showed her a video of a synagogue shooting on their first date. She insists that despite the weirdness, he "was a perfect gentleman throughout our relationship." She says at one point he attempted to deliver a slightly threatening letter to an ex-girlfriend, about which she confronted him. She concludes her piece:

I have no idea what his motivation was. I will never know. But there are a few things that I'm certain that it wasn't. This wasn't a hate crime. He fought for equality. This wasn't a crime of passion. He didn't get passionate enough. This wasn't very premeditated. He wasn't a thorough planner.

I also know that his getting shot is exactly what he wanted. He would have been the first one to tell you that he hated himself. He told me that twice he held a gun in his mouth ready to pull the trigger. He knew that he shouldn't have been allowed to own a gun, even though he loved guns. He believed as I believe that people with mental illnesses shouldn't be allowed to own guns because of people like him, people that turn into monsters. You don't know which people with mental illnesses will be the rare few like him and who will be in the majority of the completely harmless. But putting a gun in their hand could spark thoughts that they would have otherwise never have thought of. It's not a risk that we should take, no matter how fun shooting one is.

As for Betts's sister, police still not sure whether she was deliberately targeted. Some eyewitnesses said Betts had been denied entry to the bar outside of which the shooting took place, but their accounts haven't been confirmed. One survivor said he saw bodies falling in the line to get into the bar, suggesting that Betts's targets were probably packed relatively closely together in front of the building.

"I turn around and you can just see bodies falling in the line," Anthony Reynolds told NBC News. "You hear about it, you see it on TV, but like they say, when it hits home, it hits different."

Reynolds said he was leaving the bar when the shooting happened and described the shooter as a heavy-set white man. He said he knew one of the people killed.

Betts was reportedly using a 100-round magazine, with "extra magazines" on him, but he was shot and killed by police after approximately 30 seconds of shooting. Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley told the media, "If the Dayton police had not gotten to the shooter in under a minute, hundreds of people in the Oregon District would be dead today." Here's Police Chief Beihl's press conference, with footage from scene:

According to Betts's Twitter account, he was apparently following the El Paso shootings, liking the posts of various leftists posting their thoughts on it. This included a tweet by leftist activist Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch replying to Mike Cernovich (Holt later deleted the tweet and blocked Betts's account):