INDIANAPOLIS–The person who shot and killed eight people and injured five others at the FedEx Ground Facility near the Indianapolis International Airport on April 15, acted alone and no one else had any prior knowledge of the events, said a report from the Indianapolis Metro Police and the FBI.
Police say they’ve closed their investigation after conducting 120 interviews and reviewing thousands of files from 19-year-old Brandon Hole’s computer. They say the mass shooting was an act of “suicidal murder.”
IMPD Deputy Chief Craig McCartt says Hole had long had suicidal thoughts, and had been planning to couple it with a mass murder since at least last July, when he purchased the first of two rifles used in the shooting.
Hole had worked at the FedEx distribution hub, but McCartt says Hole didn’t know any of the people he shot, and didn’t target FedEx out of any grudge against the company — his departure from the job occurred when he simply stopped showing up for work.
McCartt and FBI Indianapolis Special Agent in Charge Paul Keenan say Hole considered several undisclosed targets for the shooting, but at some point settled on FedEx because he knew the layout from when he worked there. Keenan says Hole also believed — incorrectly — that he’d spotted a security vulnerability that would allow him to penetrate deep into the building.
Instead, police say, Hole killed one worker in the parking lot, then went into the building’s foyer where employee lockers were. He opened fire there, but was stopped by a security gate from going any further. McCartt says he returned to the parking lot and continued firing “indiscriminately.”
McCartt says one employee retrieved his own gun from his car and fired one shot at Hole, which missed, before driving away and calling 911. McCartt says Hole reentered the building and killed himself.
The FedEx hub employs several Sikhs, and four of the eight people killed were Sikh. But Keenan says agents found no evidence the victims’ religious or ethnic background played any part in Hole’s motivation. He says they found Hole had viewed Nazi propaganda from World War II on his computer, but says it was a tiny fraction of the files reviewed, and doesn’t appear to have reflected a belief system.
Keenan says the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit concluded Hole sought to carry out long-held suicidal thoughts, and to “demonstrate his masculinity and capability while fulfilling a final desire to experience killing people.”
