Fact Check: Is Mugshot of Texas Mall Shooter Mauricio Garcia?

The tragic killing of eight people at a mall in Texas has been followed with a drip feed of information about the alleged perpetrator, Mauricio Garcia, and the potential motive behind the mass shooting.

Some information suggests 33-year-old Garcia may have been a white supremacist and neo-Nazi, according to reports from CNN, Reuters, and AP, among others.

Amid this, other claims came out that suggested the person found in photos online was not the alleged suspect, based on a mugshot circulated on Twitter.

The Claim

A tweet by user @LibertyLockPod, posted on May 8, 2023, viewed 1.2 million times— responding to a photo shared by Bellingcat researcher Aric Toler—alleged that a mugshot of the suspect did not match the photo shared by Toler.

Toler's photo was of a topless male with a swastika, SS, and Texas tattoo. The mugshot included a tattoo that could not be seen in Toler's tweet.

@LibertyLockPod tweeted: "Something is off.

"Either the guy in the mugshot is wrong or this nazi dude is a different person entirely.

"Doesn't the neck tattoo look like older ink? Why is it missing here?"

The Facts

A desire to identify or learn more about the perpetrators of mass shootings has become something of a routine, with claims that are often politically motivated or half-baked.

Recently, former president Donald Trump perpetuated an unfounded rumor that the suspect in the March shooting at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, was taking gender hormone treatments, while the suspect in the May 2022 Uvalde shooting was also said to be trans, despite no evidence.

The example in the tweet by @LibertyLockPod is a mixture of false and third-hand information.

In the tweet, the photo on the left is not of the alleged Texas shooter. It is of an older man with the same name arrested in Texas recently.

According to records posted by Mughshots Zone, 36-year-old Mauricio Garcia was arrested twice in 2022 and once in 2023 in Dallas County Texas, largely for drug offenses.

The other photo in @LibertyLockPod's tweet is a photo said to have been taken from the alleged shooter's profile on the Russian website OK.RU. Newsweek has not been able to verify this photo independently.

While it appears that Bellingcat journalist Aric Toler has researched Garcia's profile on OK.RU and elsewhere extensively, unverified claims based on information said to have come from social media profiles have been made following similar tragedies.

In April 2023, photos circulated suggesting that the alleged perpetrator of a mass shooting in Louisville, Kentucky, had made an Instagram Stories post quoting dialogue from Star Wars—"I know what I have to do but I don't know if I have the strength to do it."—before the incident.

However, all of that person's social media accounts were suspended after the shooting; furthermore, the claim would have been unverifiable due to Instagram Stories disappearing 24 hours after they are posted.

The Ruling

Misleading Material.

The mugshot shared on Twitter is not of the gunman suspected to have killed eight in Texas this week.

It was of another man with the same name, who is three years older than the alleged suspect, arrested largely on drug charges.

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team