Philadelphia shooting : Possible motive emerges as suspect’s disturbing posts before attack revealed

After a devastating mass shooting left five people dead in Philadelphia, misinformation about the suspected shooter ran rampant on Twitter with politicians like Georgia Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene claiming the assailant was transgender.

“Another trans shooter,” Ms Greene tweeted on Tuesday with a link to an article from the right-wing website The Post Millennial.

The article used a photo from a now-deleted Facebook page that belonged to the suspected shooter, who was identified as 40-year-old Kimbrady Carriker, wearing feminine clothing.

Ms Greene’s tweet claiming the suspect was trans received over 800k views and sparked a slew of anti-transgender rhetoric from Twitter users accusing trans people of conducting mass shootings and targeting children.

However, in a press conference on Wednesday, officials confirmed that Mr Carriker is not transgender and identifies as male.

“The suspect has not identified themselves as trans,” Asa Khalif said. “They have only identified themselves as male”

In an interview with The Independent, Mr Carriker’s grandmother said her grandson was gay and sometimes enjoyed cross-dressing but had not undergone any gender transition surgery or treatment.

The Independent reached out to Ms Greene’s office for comment.

The suspected shooter, accused of killing five people and injuring two others, often posted on his social media pages about firearms.

Kimbrady Carriker, 40, posted on social media promoting his Second Amendment rights and shared pro-gun rhetoric, according to CNN.

The suspected gunman also praised former president Donald Trump while mocking President Joe Biden. He accused Mr Biden of trying to revoke his access to firearms.

The masked and heavily armed suspect accused of killing five people in a mass shooting in the Kingsessing neighborhood of Philadelphia has been identified as a 40-year-old with a history of gun offences.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner named Kimbrady Carriker on Wednesday as the shooter who sowed chaos and fear into the neighbourhood during the July 4 break, when residents should have been celebrating the holidays.

Dressed in body armour and a ski mask and armed with an AR-15-style rifle and 9mm handgun, Carriker allegedly opened fire in the neighbourhood on Monday night, killing four men and a 15-year-old boy.

Officers responded to the scene when Carriker was still allegedly firing shots, before taking the suspect into custody.

The DA said that the shooting was “premeditated” but that the victims were targeted at “random”.

Kimbrady Carriker used to visit his elderly grandmother at her home in Philadelphia every week to help her with grocery shopping and getting her computer tablet to work.

But the visits stopped suddenly about a month ago, she told The Independent in an interview on Wednesday.

“That was unusual,” the grandmother, who identified her surname as Carriker but asked that her first name be withheld, said.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out, what happened for him to snap like that. What happened?” she told The Independent. “Nobody’s going to get up out of the blue and kill people. You have to have something going wrong in your life.”

When she first heard about the shooting, Carriker’s grandmother said it reminded her of the first person shooter video games that he used to play for hours on end.

She told The Independent that she had never known of Carriker being in trouble with police, and hadn’t been aware he had been charged with gun offences in 2003.

Carriker was a very creative person, who was good with computers and graphic design, she said.

Over the course of the long holiday weekend from Friday evening through to Wednesday morning, the US endured at least 16 mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA).

The shootings spanned all corners of the nation, from Texas to Washington DC to Illinois and beyond, leaving at least 15 people dead and another 94 injured.

The weekend of shootings came on the one-year anniversary of the horrific mass shooting where a gunman killed seven people at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois.

President Joe Biden responded to the latest round of gun violence by once again calling on Congress to take action with common-sense gun control reform.

Ralph Moralis, 59, was supposed to walk his daughter down the aisle at her wedding just days after he was killed in Monday’s mass shooting.

Lashyd Merritt, 22, had just stepped out of his house to go to the local store for food when he was gunned down by the suspect.

Daujan Brown, 15, was killed in the mass shooting while trying to help his friend who had also been shot.

Joseph Wamah Jr, 31, is believed to have been the first victim killed by the shooter in Monday night’s attack – but it was several hours before his body was found.

Dymir Stanton was 29 years old and lived on Frazier Street, where the shooter carried out their rampage.

The US has recorded at least one mass act of gun violence every day, underscored by a chaotic July 4 holiday

Alex Woodward reports: