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Baton Rouge gunman identified, online trail and alias found
The man identified on Sunday as the shooter who left three officers dead and three wounded in Baton Rouge appeared to have left an online trail back to web pages featuring complaints about the treatment of African Americans by police
Gavin Long, 29, has been identified as the Baton Rouge shooter
Gavin Long, 29, using the pseudonym “Cosmo Setepenra”, condemned the perceived injustices against black people in a series of videos, photographs and online writings.
A website was registered earlier this year by someone using the name and home address of Gavin E Long of Kansas City, Missouri, and an email address that has also been used by “Cosmo Setepenra”, purportedly a radio host and life coach based in Kansas City.
Yet, a search by the police on Sunday resulted in no public record of anyone named Cosmo Setepenra in the US being found, the Guardian reports. Calls to a cellphone number publicly listed online in that name are said to have gone straight to voicemail and emails requesting comment sent to addresses listed for him were not returned.
In an author profile, Cosmo Setepenra described himself as a US Marines veteran who reached the rank of sergeant. Reports said on Sunday that Long had been discharged from the marines in 2010 after reaching the same rank.
A recent post on a Facebook account for the pseudonym had read taht: “Violence is not THE answer (it is a answer), but at what point do you stand up so that you and your people don’t become the Native Americans...EXTINCT?”
On a Twitter page in Setepenra’s name, a posting in the early hours of Sunday stated: “Just [because] you wake up every morning doesn’t mean that you’re living. And just [because] you shed your physical body doesn’t mean that you’re dead.”
The Guardian reports that video footage posted on the Setepenra Facebook page earlier this month appeared to show the owner of the account in Dallas, Texas, where five police officers had been killed by a gunman at the end of a protest against the excessive use of force by law enforcement.
The newspaper also mentioned a video separately posted to YouTube on 10 July in the name of Cosmo Setepenra, where the speaker said he was making the clip in Dallas. He reportedly compared the fighting of oppression by black people to the efforts of American revolutionaries.
“But when an African fights back, it’s wrong,” according to mainstream thought, he said. “You gotta fight back – that’s the only way a bully knows to quit.”
