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Crimo made rap music underneath the title Awake The Rapper. In a single video, he wears a helmet and vest inside an empty classroom and scatters bullets throughout the ground.
Screenshot by NPR/AwakeTheRapper
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Screenshot by NPR/AwakeTheRapper
Crimo made rap music underneath the title Awake The Rapper. In a single video, he wears a helmet and vest inside an empty classroom and scatters bullets throughout the ground.
Screenshot by NPR/AwakeTheRapper
Within the 1000’s of messages, pictures, movies and songs posted on-line by Robert Crimo III, the 21-year-old suspected of opening hearth on a Fourth of July parade in suburban Illinois, one conclusion is obvious: Crimo was unusually curious about violence.
No less than two of his music movies depicted some type of capturing. On Discord, he shared a photograph of Budd Dwyer, a politician who killed himself throughout a dwell press convention. And he apparently posted 1000’s of instances to a web-based discussion board devoted to sharing violent pictures and movies of individuals dying.
“It was fairly clear that this suspect had a historical past on-line of glorifying and fantasizing about violence, and to me that sends a pink flag on high of a pink flag,” mentioned Jared Holt, a fellow on the Atlantic Council who researches home extremism.
Officers are reviewing Crimo’s on-line exercise, mentioned Chris Covelli from the Lake County Sheriff’s Workplace at a Tuesday press convention. Requested if anybody had ever referred to as native police with issues about Crimo’s on-line content material, Covelli mentioned no.
Underneath variations on the title “Awake” – the identical phrase tattooed above his left eye – Crimo posted repeatedly to YouTube.
On Spotify, Crimo’s rap music had been listened to tens of millions of instances earlier than the service eliminated it after the capturing. For followers of his music, he hosted a Discord server, the place followers shared memes and hyperlinks to his songs.
Holt described Crimo’s on-line footprint as consistent with actions that attempt “to make themselves appear very intense and really violent to build up a specific amount of perverted clout amongst different folks in the identical on-line areas.”
“There are parts of the web that delight themselves on this fetishization of violence, of being as offensive as humanly potential,” he mentioned.
Among the many most annoying is what seems to be Crimo’s exercise on a discussion board referred to as Documenting Actuality, the place folks share graphic pictures and movies that present the aftermath of violence.
There, a person named “Awake47” shared pictures of Crimo and posted a twenty first birthday message that matches data launched by the FBI. The person repeatedly handed footage of shootings and different real-life violence.
He posted there so usually that different discussion board customers acknowledged his face when police revealed a photograph throughout the manhunt on Monday. “I all the time knew there was at the least one assassin on this web site, and I am not satisfied he is the one one. However Awake? Wow,” wrote one person.
One other of Crimo’s music movies reveals a crudely animated faculty shooter who’s in the end apprehended and shot by police.
Screenshot by NPR/AwakeTheRapper
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Screenshot by NPR/AwakeTheRapper
One other of Crimo’s music movies reveals a crudely animated faculty shooter who’s in the end apprehended and shot by police.
Screenshot by NPR/AwakeTheRapper
Crimo’s fascination with violence additionally appeared in his music, which he revealed on Spotify and YouTube underneath the title Awake the Rapper.
One crudely animated video depicts a younger man with tactical gear and an assault-style rifle capturing folks earlier than police seem to apprehend and shoot him – all whereas a chorus is repeated: “Residing the dream, nothing’s actual. I simply wish to scream ‘fuck this world.'”
And one other music video opens with Crimo sitting alone in a classroom. Midway via the track, he reaches right into a backpack – then the video cuts to Crimo carrying a helmet and tactical vest.
One factor that’s troublesome to determine from Crimo’s on-line footprint is whether or not the capturing might have been ideologically motivated. Authorities say they haven’t any indication that the capturing was racially or religiously motivated.
After the capturing Monday, some photos of Crimo unfold quickly on social media, together with a photograph wherein he wore a Trump flag throughout his shoulders and one other at a Trump rally. A video posted by Crimo reveals him amongst a crowd ready exterior an airport for Trump to land close by in Air Power One.
However Holt says a handful of pictures will not be sufficient to point some form of political leaning or right-wing extremism. “I have never seen something that basically definitively locations this within the politically motivated violence bucket simply but,” he mentioned.
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