Posts misidentify gunman in Allen, Texas mall shooting
The sites say the man is 36 years old, but Reuters reported the shooter in Allen was 33 years old
(Reuters) - Posts online have misidentified Mauricio Garcia, the gunman who Texas authorities say killed eight people in a Dallas-area shopping mall on May 7, by sharing photos of another man with the same name.
Reuters reported that Garcia, a 33-year-old resident of Dallas, opened fire at the Allen Premium Outlets mall before he was killed by police, and news outlets have reported that his social media profiles featured white-supremacist ideology (here), (here).
Tweets sharing photos that allegedly show Garcia can be seen (here) and (here). Another example can be seen (here).
The first photo appears to be from Recentlybooked.com (archive.ph/pegWi) showing a February 2022 arrest for a man with the same name as the Texas gunman. It can also be seen on Arrests.org (here). The same site shows the second photo on social media for a separate arrest for the same man in August 2022 (here). The sites say the man is 36 years old, but Reuters reported the shooter in Allen was 33 years old.
Indeed, these photos are not of the Allen, Texas gunman, but show a man with the same name but different date of birth, a Dallas County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson said.
“The photos that we have seen are not the same person in the Allen shooting,” the spokesperson said. “The suspected shooter does not have any mug shots in the Dallas County Jail system based on his name and date of birth.”
Garcia had no criminal history before the shooting, Reuters reported, citing a regional director of the Texas Department of Public Safety (here).
VERDICT
False. The gunman in the recent Texas mall shooting has been misidentified in online posts, which share photos of a man with the same name but different age.
