STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.
Are any of the men pictured in social media posts Mauricio Garcia, the gunman who was killed during the May 7, 2023, mass shooting at an Allen, Texas, outlet mall? No, that's not true: While a man pictured in two different posts with two different pictures shares a name with the gunman, he is not the same person nor the same age. He is a former inmate who has been arrested before and has mugshots in the system. In addition, Texas authorities said the Mauricio Garcia involved in the May 7 shooting had no criminal history; therefore, there would be no mugshots of him available to share.
The claim appeared in a post on Facebook (archived here) published on May 8, 2023. In part, the description says:
Why do you let the media continue to brainwash you? There is no honest media left after Fox turned to the dark side in 2018. Mauricio Martinez Garcia (Allen TX) [photo on the left in post] and the other cat [photo on right] who drove through the crowd of Venezuelan immigrants are neither WHITE, nor White Supremacists. In fact, none of the mass shooters have been white supremacists ...
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue May 9 17:21:59 2023 UTC)
The heavily tattooed man on the right in the post is George Alvarez, the man charged with eight counts of manslaughter and 10 counts of aggravated assault for slamming into a group waiting at a bus stop near a migrant shelter in Brownsville, Texas.
In addition, a post on Twitter (in a reply to the Washington Post) offers a mugshot of a Mauricio Garcia as a picture of the dead shooter. it appears below:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue May 9 20:45:56 2023 UTC)
Neither of the men pictured above can be the Allen gunman because the 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia, who was shot and killed by police, had no criminal record. In a May 9, 2023, news briefing (video below), Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Regional Director Hank Sibley provided the details. At the 26:55 mark, he said:
The shooter had no CCH [computerized criminal history], no criminal history. So, we had no documentable history on him.
Texas law "requires that information on arrests, prosecutions and the disposition of the case for persons arrested for a Class B misdemeanor or greater violation of Texas criminal statutes to be included in CCH ..." Because there is no criminal history on the Allen shooter, there would be no mugshot.
Here's the video of the press conference with Sibley:
The two mugshots of a man named Mauricio Garcia who was processed at the Dallas County jail can be found on third-party websites that aggregate booking photos and information from jail websites.
In an email to Lead Stories on May 11, 2023, Douglas Sisk, a public information officer for the Dallas County Sheriff's Office, stated, "The subject involved in the Allen shooting has never been processed in the Dallas County Jail under the name Mauricio Garcia with a date of birth of 10/24/1989." Sisk confirmed that the social media posts show two photos of a different Mauricio Garcia.
Same person different arrest dates. And again, this is NOT the subject from Allen Shooting.
The picture from the Facebook post above can be found on the Mugshots Zone website. This Mauricio Garcia is about three years older than the shooter, according to the information on the website. His mugshot appears below:
(Source: Mugshot Zone screenshot taken on Wed May 10 16:06:08 2023 UTC)
The photo from the post on Twitter came from the Recently Booked website. His mugshot from an earlier arrest can be found below:
(Source: Recently Booked screenshot taken on Wed May 10 16:14:03 2023 UTC)
Updates:
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2023-05-11T14:48:16Z 2023-05-11T14:48:16Z Adds details from Dallas County Sheriff's Office, edits for clarity
