A 19-year-old from suburban Chicago was arrested before he could carry out a mass shooting plot targeting a Hindu temple, after planning the attack for more than two years.
Alexandros Paporakis, a cashier at a Taco Bell in Palatine, Illinois, told coworkers he “couldn’t wait to kill Indian” people and that Sunday would be a “special day.” Prosecutors and police believe he intended to attack a large Hindu temple in Aurora, about 40 miles west of Chicago. The Sri Venkateswara Swami (Balaji) Temple, the area’s largest, later informed members of a security threat.
According to police, a red Acura RDX registered to Paporakis entered a temple parking lot around 12:25 pm on Sunday and left less than 15 minutes later. He was later seen alone in the car near his home. Officials said the plot was foiled after a coworker reported him. Mount Prospect and Palatine police arrested Paporakis as he left his home that afternoon.
Court documents show that Paporakis called a coworker to say his gun had jammed at the scene and that he was fleeing. He sent a video of an AR-style rifle that failed to fire and said he was trying to fix it so he could “retry,” adding that the person he had fired at was “certainly saved by his God today.”
A search of the home he shared with his mother uncovered a rifle, multiple loaded magazines, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a tactical vest with body armour, a patch linked to white supremacist extremism, items bearing Nazi symbols including swastikas, and a gas can labelled with an anti-Indian slur. Detectives also recovered a document attributed to him titled “Why I Fought: A.K.A.: (Aurora Shooter’s Manifesto),” which described Indian, Jewish and African American people as “subhumans” and outlined a plan to kill as many as possible. He described himself as a white supremacist and neo-Nazi who fantasised about mass murder.
Paporakis faces felony charges of making a terrorist threat and unlawfully possessing a rifle. Court records indicate he had been planning an attack for two years and had been searching for a specific location in recent months, while presenting himself as a working college student.