Micah Xavier Johnson, the 25 year old shooter behind the horrific Dallas massacre last week, which cost five police officers their lives, was a weapon loving hermit.
He opened fire during a Black Lives Matter march protesting the killings of two black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, by police officers last week. In addition to the five police officers killed, Johnson managed to wound seven others.
Eventually, he was killed by police following hours-long negotiations, where he is said to have laughed at them and left a cryptic message written in his own blood. When they later raided his home, they found bomb-making materials, ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition, and a personal journal of combat tactics.
On Sunday, The Blaze’s Lawrence Jones interviewed Johnson’s parents, to find out what could have triggered such a monstrous act. The full interview is set to air later this week, but a portrait of a lone wolf with behavioral issues emerges, similar to that of many other massacrists of the current mass shooting epidemic plaguing our country.
Johnson, who was from from Mesquite, Texas, lived an isolated life together with his mother, Delphine Johnson, and her wife. His mother claims that before serving in the military, he was happy and outgoing, but turned into a hermit after being discharged from the Army in 2015.
“The military was not what Micah thought it would be […] He was very disappointed, very disappointed. But it may be that the ideal that he thought of our government, what he thought the military represented, it just didn’t live up to his expectations.”
He joined the Army in March 2009, was deployed to Afghanistan between November 2013 and July 2014, and discharged in April 2015. In between he had been awarded several medals for his service, such as the Afghanistan Campaign Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, even though he never saw combat.
However, the discharge was preceded by an accusation of sexual harassment. New York Times quoted from Johnson’s file, dated May 2014, his lawyer saying,
“Johnson’s accuser recommended that he receive ’mental help.’ She also requested ’a protective order against Pfc. Johnson pertaining to myself, my family, home, restaurant and any other place of residence I may reside at.’”
Johnson’s mother and stepmother said they could not think of any specific event in the military that may have triggered his new introverted, weapon-loving existence.
The explanation offered was that he was disappointed by the reality of military life, since he had been “gung-ho” about it throughout his adolescence, and wanted to be a police officer as a child,
“He loved his country […] He wanted to protect his country.”
But something went very wrong along the way. In retrospect, it’s hard to understand how no one would be alarmed by his new, lonely, weapon-obsessed lifestyle. He even practiced bomb detonations and tactical drills in his backyard.
There is another similarity between Johnson and other mass shooters. While a large amount of the shootings are done by lone wolves with white supremacist ideologies, Johnson identified with racist black militant groups.
On Facebook, he liked the page New Black Panther Party, which the Anti-Defamation League calls,
“The largest organized anti-Semitic and racist black militant group in the United States.”
Another page he liked belongs to the African American Defense League, which was formed in 2014 by a man named Mauricelm-lei Millere, who is known for calling for violence against police of whom Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said,
“Usually after a high profile police-related shooting he takes to social media to encourage violence against police.”
There is little difference between white and black extremist groups, and they have the same power to trigger a massacre among lonely, deranged followers. Johnson’s father could only conclude,
“I love my son with all my heart. […] I hate what he did.”
Featured image screengrab from YouTube.
