Earlier today a shooter went on a rampage in Mesa, Arizona, allegedly killing one man, injuring five others and stealing a car.
According to the SPLC, Ryan Giroux is a well-known member of hate groups in the area.
Ryan Giroux, who allegedly murdered one person and wounded five others earlier today and was arrested after a frenzied manhunt, was released from prison in Arizona in 2013. According to prison records, he has convictions for attempt to commit aggravated assault, marijuana, theft, and second degree burglary. Records indicate that he was sentenced to a total of about 14 years in prison.
Retired Mesa Police Detective Matt Browning told Hatewatch that he knew Giroux from previous encounters, and that he was a member of Hammerskin Nation, a notoriously violent racist skinhead group, and an associate of the Aryan Brotherhood, a national prison gang with a long list of murders to its credit. “He’s a violent guy,” said Browning, who knew Giroux as a young skinhead in the 1990s and early 2000s. “I think his time in prison contributed to that.”
Giroux, 41, has been in and out of Arizona prisons since 1993, when he was arrested for burglary and marijuana possession. His most recent prison stint, for an attempt to commit aggravated assault, began in 2007 and ended in October 2013.
