The morning of the shooting, Desmond Holly posted a photo of a revolver—possibly the one used in the attack—on his X account. Source: X
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Months before Desmond Holly opened fire at a Colorado high school, he developed a deep fascination with mass shooters. Online, he expressed neo-Nazi views and was active on a violent gore site. Offline, he began to amass tactical gear.
The deeply disturbing specifics of this case follow a pattern recently discovered by ADL Center on Extremism, which its analysts have found in at least four school shootings committed by young people over the past year.
On September 10, 2025, 16-year-old Holly opened fire at Evergreen High School, wounding two students before shooting himself. During a September 11 press conference, a Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson shared that investigators had learned Holly had been “radicalized by some extremist network,” but did not elaborate further.
Research by ADL Center on Extremism indicates that Holly spent substantial amounts of time in online spaces featuring extremist ideologies and violent content, ultimately adopting extremist views himself.
Holly had an account on the gore forum WatchPeopleDie, where he had commented on posts about shootings in Parkland (2018), Buffalo (2022) and at a Quebec City mosque (2017).
Holly appears to have joined the gore site on December 26, 2024, during the month window between the school shootings at Abundant Life Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin, and Antioch High School in Nashville, Tennessee.
Holly is one of several mass attackers who have been active on the platform.
Groundbreaking research from ADL Center on Extremism in August 2025 revealed that Natalie Rupnow and Solomon Henderson, the perpetrators of the Madison and Nashville school shootings, also used the site. As an example, in August, a Moroccan teenager announced plans to livestream a mass stabbing and shared a manifesto on WatchPeopleDie, as well as X and 8kun.
Holly also collected tactical gear, adorned that gear with extremist symbols and posted content emulating former shooters such as Rupnow and the 1999 Columbine High School shooters. Like many attackers, Holly assembled his gear in a piecemeal fashion, drawing inspiration from the equipment used by previous mass shooters. For example, Holly posted a now-deleted TikTok video in which he modelled a tactical helmet and a gas mask; the post’s background music featured a Serbian folk song that Brenton Tarrant played while livestreaming the 2019 Christchurch Mosque shootings.
Underneath his post, Holly engaged with several comments in a manner that suggested he was close to committing his own attack. He liked one comment reading, “You got close to a full setup now man time to make a move 👍.” He also liked a comment reading, “Just need an gopro its gonan be cool an pov [sic],” and responded, “A GoPro, battery, ear protection, and maybe a patch.” Responding to another commenter, he wrote, “I’m planning on getting a camera instead.”
This exchange suggests Holly may have intended or hoped to livestream his attack, emulating prior white supremacist mass shooters that he admired, including Brenton Tarrant, the white supremacist terrorist who murdered 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019, and Payton Gendron, who killed 10 Black people during the 2022 Buffalo shooting.
Under a TikTok post from June 2025, Holly had liked a comment asking, “is bro gonna become a Hero." Some white supremacists use the term “Hero” to refer to successful ideologically motivated attackers. Holly had also liked a comment telling him to acquire a white supremacist sonnenrad patch like Tarrant and Gendron wore, replying that he had made some and sharing a photo of patches featuring a Totenkopf and sonnenrad. Both are Nazi-era symbols used today as hate symbols.
Holly’s TikTok accounts were filled with white supremacist symbolism. His current account includes “14w” in the username, a reference to the 14 words, a popular white supremacist slogan. On his previous account, his profile photo featured a picture of Payton Gendron being arrested, set against a sonnenrad background. His most recent profile photo showed Elliot Rodger, the incel who killed six people during a shooting rampage in California in 2014.
Writings on a skull mask Holly wore in one image included “AL NOOR,” the name of the New Zealand mosque Tarrant attacked; “14,” a reference to the 14 words; a Celtic cross; and “TJD,” shorthand for Total Jew Death.
Holly also expressed admiration for school shooters and was active within the True Crime Community (TCC) on TikTok, whose adherents have a disturbing fascination with mass murderers and serial killers. Holly joins a long list of mass attackers who have engaged with TCC content online, including the 2025 Antioch and 2024 Abundant Life shooters.
A few days before the shooting, Holly posted a TikTok showing him wearing a black t-shirt with “WRATH” written across the chest in red paint and posing in a similar manner to Natalie Rupnow, who killed two people during a school shooting in Wisconsin last December. Holly included a picture of Rupnow with the post, and prior TikToks show Holly had created the shirt himself, mimicking a shirt that one of the attackers wore in the 1999 Columbine shooting, which occurred just 20 miles from Evergreen.
Just two hours before the attack, Holly posted a photo of a revolver—likely the one used in the shooting— and box of ammunition on his X account. He had previously shared the same image on September 5. On TikTok, Holly had posted images of other gear he had acquired over the past few months, including a skull mask, ballistic vest, gas mask and a knife with a Nordic rune drawn on it.
How ‘WatchPeopleDie’ Served as a Gateway to Extremism for at Least Three School Shooters
Holly’s active presence on 'WatchPeopleDie” is the third example in less than a year of a teenager using the platform, becoming radicalized and committing a school shooting or murder.
WatchPeopleDie is an online forum in which users post and interact with extremely graphic and violent content, including videos depicting murder, rape, beheadings, suicides, dismemberments and violence against animals. WPD originated on Reddit, but was banned from the site in March 2019 after a user posted clips from white supremacist Brenton Tarrant’s livestreamed Christchurch shooting.
As ADL’s research has revealed, white supremacist, antisemitic and other extremist content is frequently posted on the site. Young people can readily access extremist content and visual depictions of graphic violence that are celebrated by users of the platform, potentially desensitizing them to such content and increasing the risk of ideologically-motivated violence.