Illinois (USA): On Sunday 11th October, 19-year-old Alexandros Paporakis, was arrested and charged with making a terrorist threat and unlawfully possessing a rifle with a barrel shorter than 16 inches. Armed with approximately 300 rounds of ammunition and body armour, Paporakis had travelled to the Sri Venkateswara Swami (Balaji) Temple in Aurora in an attempt to carry out a mass shooting. As he tried to open fire, the gun jammed which prompted Paporakis to flee.
At his subsequent prosecution, court records confirm Paporakis was employed as cashier a local Taco Bell branch. Members of his tream explained how he shared white supremacist, Nazi ideology and racist remarks about Indians. On the day before the attack he allegedly divulged to a colleage that he wished to kill Indian people and was planning to attack a Hindu temple in Aurora. Returning home from the failed attack, he seached online for ways to repair the rifle and messaged a colleague about what transpired. Two of his colleagues contacted the police who then arrested Paporakis.
Authortities recovered an eight-page document created by Paporakis titled “Why I Fought: A.K.A. (Aurora Shooter’s Manifesto)”. Alonside expressing white supremacist and neo-Nazi views, Paporakis wrote how he intended to kill as many Indians and other non-white people as possible. The chilling incident took place on the first day of Navaratri, when thousands of Hindus gather at temples and just two weeks after an attack on a Hindu temple in Ohio.