Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby and Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Dr. William A. LaPlante hold a press brief at the Pentagon, May 6, 2022. (DoD Photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class James K. Lee)
REAGAN NATIONAL DEFENSE FORUM — Both Israel and Ukraine are facing an operational “crisis” with the proliferation of drone warfare, according to the Pentagon’s top acquisition official, who pushed for more funding for the two US partners and for the Defense Department to speed its own fielding of unmanned and counter-unmanned systems.
“The other thing I’d say about the supplemental is both for Israel, as well as Ukraine, is there’s a crisis actually happening right now, an operational one, I would say, in the UAS [uncrewed aerial system] and counter-UAS situation,” Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante said Saturday during a panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum, emphasizing that the counter-UAS side is the most vital.
“It is an urgent issue… We need counter UAS capabilities at scale,” he continued. “We need lots of money, we need production lines to go up fast.”
LaPlante was referencing the supplemental spending package with billions in aid for Ukraine and Israel requested by the Biden administration that would fund a host of critical objectives, key among them uncrewed systems that can survive contested electromagnetic environments and weapons that the Ukrainians and Israelis could use to take out enemy drones.
The requirement is so urgent that LaPlante compared the need to surge production “through the roof” to the Army’s move to greatly expand manufacturing of 155 millimeter artillery shells, which have been used extensively in Ukraine and are now being transferred to Israel as well.
“We need those supplementals to get on this,” he added.
LaPlante’s remarks also carried implications for the US military, which he said “will need it [unmanned and counter-unmanned capabilities] all across the board” as it seeks to deter China through drone production initiatives like Replicator.
Countries reliant on US support like Ukraine and Israel have high demand for counter UAS systems, but US forces far from home need them as well. Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault, US troops in Iraq and Syria have been attacked more than 70 times by what the Pentagon says are Iranian-backed groups using rockets and drones. No American soldiers have been reported killed in those attacks, and the US has responded with multiple strikes that the Pentagon says has killed more than a dozen people.
The Army has been pioneering some ways to defend against the drone threat, recently standing up a Joint Counter Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office (JCO). At the Association of the US Army conference in October, JCO Director Maj. Gen. Sean Gainey said 30mm cannons have proven very effective against smaller drones, but “no silver bullet” exists. Another JCO official also said at the conference that electronic warfare will likely play a key role in fending off swarms, which the Army plans to demo next year.
Army leaders expect the need to defend against drones to only increase, and are even planning on counter-UAS curricula becoming a regular part of boot camp.
Meeting the UAS challenge, which LaPlante mainly described as stemming from Group 3 or medium-sized drones, needs to see UAS and defensive weapons transition from prototypes to production. Drones themselves will have to be built at a sustainable scale, feature adaptable hardware and software and be able to operate in comms-denied environments, he said, pointing to Replicator as a way to spur greater UAS production.
Moreover, counter-UAS solutions need to be relatively inexpensive compared to the threats they’re facing. The Pentagon is working on cheaper solutions like directed energy, “but that’s not quite here yet,” according to LaPlante.
“So you take that all together, that’s the problem of our time,” he said.
Hundreds of people gathered for a candlelight prayer vigil tonight at a park where, hours earlier, students had been brought to reunite with their families after the shooting at Perry High School.
Community members gather for a candlelight vigil at Wiese Park in Perry, Iowa, on Thursday.Jamie Kelter Davis for NBC
Bundled up against freezing temperatures, they listened to pastors from many faiths and heard a message of hope in both English and Spanish.
Sisters Yesenia Roeder and Khamya Hall, both 17, said alongside their mother, Alita, that the 17-year-old classmate who police identified as the shooter had been bullied relentlessly since elementary school. That escalated recently, they said, when his younger sister started getting picked on, too. Officials at the school didn’t intervene, they said, and that was “the last straw” for the shooter.
“He was hurting. He got tired. He got tired of the bullying. He got tired of the harassment,” Yesenia Roeder Hall, 17, said. “Was it a smart idea to shoot up the school? No. God, no.”
D’Sheka Maggitt, 35, whose sons, Phillip Gray and Trent Maggitt, attend Perry High School, said the two left home at 7:22 a.m. to catch the school bus, and about 15 minutes later Trent texted her saying that there had been a shooting at the school.
Naturally, she said, she panicked, grabbed her keys and sped to the school.
“Before I could get to the school, I had already seen 10 to 15 police and sheriff’s cars flying in the direction of the school,” she said, adding that this prompted her to put her emergency lights on and drive even faster.
When she arrived, the entrance to the school was blocked off. She said that little information was being provided.
Maggitt could not reach her sons by phone for some time. When she did, she learned that Trent, who is 15, had already entered the school when the shooting started. He told her that he had heard four or five rounds fired and then “everyone started running.”
Phillip, 14, said that when he got off the bus, he heard three shots. He said he turned around and heard his bus driver yelling for the students to get back on. He did. As the driver drove off, he said he saw his friend, a 10th grader, being carried by a teacher outside the school.
“He had blood on the side of his hip and he was limping while the teacher was holding him,” Phillip said.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said the shooting “strikes to the heart of everything that we hold dear.”
Gov. Kim Reynolds speaks outside of the Perry Middle School and High School complex where six people were shot today in Perry, Iowa. Jamie Kelter Davis for NBC News
“Our hearts are heavy today and our prayers are with the Perry community,” Reynolds said at an afternoon news conference. “This senseless tragedy has shaken our entire state to the core.”
A sixth grader was killed and five other people were injured during this morning’s shooting at Perry High School, officials said at an afternoon briefing.
The child who was killed was a student at Perry Middle School, said Mitch Mortvedt, the assistant director of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.
Four other students were injured as well as a school administrator, and they are being treated at area hospitals, he said.
Mortvedt said one of the injured victims was in critical condition with what appeared to be non-life-threatening injuries.
The shooting happened before school had started and not many students were on campus, but there was a breakfast program taking place, he said, adding that there may have been students of different grades in the school at that time.
Authorities identified the shooter as a 17-year-old student at the high school.
Dylan Butler appeared to have acted alone and was armed with a pump action shotgun and a small-caliber handgun, Mitch Mortvedt, the assistant director of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, said at an afternoon news conference.
Police continue to look into a motive for the shooting, he said. Mortvedt said that officers at the scene found what appeared to be the shooter with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Officers also located an improvised explosive device at the scene, whichMortvedt described as “rudimentary.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis offered his support for Iowa after the school shooting at Perry High School on Thursday, but said that dealing with such shootings “is more of a local and state issue,” declining to suggest any changes to federal law he’d support that would make them less frequent.
The Republican presidential candidate touted efforts in Florida to keep schools safe in a joint interview with NBC News and The Des Moines Register.
“We obviously, you know, have a responsibility to create safe environments. The federal government is probably not going to be leading that effort,” DeSantis said.
“I think it is more of a local and state issue,” he added. “But we’ve shown how it’s done in Florida. The things that we’ve done have been very, very effective.”
The chair of the Iowa Democratic Party said in a statement that students “should be able to focus on creating brighter futures for themselves while they are in their classrooms, not looking for escape routes, hiding places, or fearing for their safety.”
“I am so sad and so sorry that the Perry community is living this nightmare that has happened far too often across our country,” Chair Rita Hart said in a statement this afternoon.
“The Perry community deserves better. Iowa deserves better,” she said.
Monica M. Gonzalez’s daughter was grabbing breakfast at the Perry High School cafeteria this morning when the gunman opened fire. Gonzalez’s daughter immediately fled the area. She was sprinting down a hallway when a teacher appeared, opened up a side door and yelled, “Run!”
Gonzalez’s daughter kept running until she reached the nearby National Guard Armory, where Perry students had been trained to shelter in the event of a mass shooting. The girl hid behind the building “because she was worried if the shooter got out of the school that he’d be running to their safe spot, too,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez said she was shaken and “shocked” over the events of the day, though she expressed gratitude to the teacher who opened the door for her daughter. “All I can say is thank u, thank u and thank u for getting her to someplace safe,” Gonzalez wrote in a Facebook group for members of the community.
Parent Jody Kurth said she received a text message from her daughter about a shooting at the high school.
“It was absolutely horrifying. One of the worst moments of my entire life,” she said, getting emotional.
Both of her children are safe.
“But the best phone call I got was saying that they were OK,” she said.
Kurth moved to the area seven years ago and said she never imagined something like this happening in their community.
“It’s overwhelming,” she said. “The pain in your heart, it’s overwhelming.”
Multiple patients from the shooting at Perry High School are being treated at Iowa Methodist Medical Center and the MercyOne Des Moines Medical Center, the Polk County Medical Coordination Center said in a statement this afternoon.
All families of the victims have been reunited, the statement said.
The center said that it sent emergency personnel, ambulances and helicopters to the scene of the shooting.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said on the social media platform X today that “our hearts are broken by this senseless tragedy” and that “our prayers are with the students, teachers & families of the Perry Community.”
“I have been in contact with law enforcement agencies & am continuing to monitor the situation. I will be joining their press conference today,” she wrote.
The next news conference is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. ET.
Perry Community School District will be closed on Friday.
Counseling services will be available at the public library for people in need from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, Perry High School said in a Facebook post.
Des Moines Area Community College said the Perry VanKirk Center will be closed through the weekend. Campuses will remain open.
“Our thoughts are with Perry community, staff, and students affected by today’s tragic shooting,” the school said on X. “We’re providing resources to those affected.”
A Perry High School student described hiding in a small room with three other students and a counselor after gunfire erupted before the start of classes this morning.
Student Ava Augustus said through tears that people were calling their parents and friends when they heard, “He’s down, you can go out.”
“I run and you can just see glass everywhere, blood on the floor,” she said, her voice breaking. “I get to my car and they’re taking a girl out of the auditorium who had been shot in her leg.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland has been briefed on the shooting, according to a spokesperson with the Department of Justice.
“Agents from the FBI Omaha Des Moines resident agency are on the scene and are assisting, and ATF has responded to the active shooter at the high school,” the spokesperson said.
Sen. Chuck Grassley said the “appalling violence” at Perry High School “is heartbreaking.”
The Republican senator thanked law enforcement and school officials for their quick response “to protect students” and “restore safety.”
UnityPoint Health system said it had two patients, both of whom sustained gunshot wounds. But the health care system did not give further details on their conditions.
UnityPoint Health said it was expecting a joint news release from all the hospitals involved as they’re all in coordination.
Rep. Zach Nunn said he is “beyond angry” after a gunman opened fire at Perry High School.
“My heart, and my commitment to holding those accountable, is with the community of Perry. We have a duty to protect our children, families, and educators,” he said in a statement.
Nunn, a Republican who represents Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District, added that he will continue to monitor the situation and that the “school is now secure.”
“We will not rest until there is full accountability for this heinous act of violence,” he said.
Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante said that school had not yet started when the shooting began.
“Luckily, so there were very few students and faculty in the building, which I think contributed to a good outcome in that sense,” he said at a news briefing.
Around 7:37 a.m. local time, authorities were alerted to an active shooter situation at the high school, he said. An officer first arrived within seven minutes and found multiple gunshot victims.
It’s not immediately clear how many people were injured and what the extent of their injuries are, he told reporters.
The shooter has been identified, but the sheriff declined to release further details.
“There is no further danger to the public. The community is safe,” he said. “We’re just now working backwards trying to figure out everything that happened.”
A Perry High School student described hearing “a couple of bangs” and seeing “a bunch of kids running” on the morning of the school shooting, but thought it was a prank.
But then a friend said “that there was a shooter with a gun,” the student, identified only as Carlos, told NBC News. “Then we got scared but again, we thought it was like a prank or something.”
The shooter is dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound and may have been a student, according to multiple law enforcement officials briefed on the matter.
Three others were injured, including two students and an administrator, the officials said.
One of the injuries may be fatal but the investigation is ongoing, the officials said.
President Joe Biden is tracking the latest on the Iowa shooting, a White House official said, adding that senior staff have been in touch with the Iowa governor’s office.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has responded to the active shooter incident at Perry High School, the ATF’s Kansas City Field Division said in a post on social media.
Agents from the FBI Omaha Des Moines resident agency are at the shooting scene and assisting the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, the lead agency.
Victims from Perry High School are being taken to MercyOne Des Moines Medical Center, a hospital spokesperson said.
The hospital dispatched ambulances and helicopters to the shooting scene.
It was not immediately clear how many patients were headed to MercyOne.
“We cannot comment on the number of patients, patient statuses or names,” the hospital said in a subsequent statement.
Parent Erica Jolliff told The Associated Press that her daughter, a ninth grader at the school, reported getting rushed from the school grounds at around 7:45 a.m.
Jolliff was distraught and looking for her son Amir, a sixth grader, one hour later, according to the AP.
“I just want to know that he’s safe and OK,” she said. “They won’t tell me nothing.”
The first reports about a possible active shooter at the high school came in around 7:40 a.m. local time, according to NBC affiliate WHO of Des Moines, Iowa.
The middle school was cleared around 8:25 a.m., the news station reported, and a second team cleared the high school by 8:27 a.m.
As a result of the situation, the elementary school was evacuated and dismissed by 8:32 a.m.
Police respond to Perry High School in Perry, Iowa, on Thursday.Andrew Harnik / AP
“Pray for the community in Perry, Iowa this morning,” he wrote.
Ramaswamy was hosting a campaign event in Perry on Thursday.
The shooting comes days before the Iowa caucuses, which will kick off the 2024 Republican presidential primary process on Jan. 15.
A spokesperson for the Perry Police Department confirmed there is an active shooting at the high school. No further details were immediately available.
A news conference is scheduled for 11 a.m. ET.
Police respond to an active shooter situation at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa, on Thursday. Andrew Harnik / APPolice respond to an active shooter situation at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa, on Thursday. Andrew Harnik / AP
Linda Andorf, board president for the Perry Community School District, said news of today’s shooting is “terrible.”
“It is horrendously awful,” she said. “People need to figure out their life. This is just disgusting. It’s terrible.”
Multiple law enforcement vehicles, including what appeared to be police and state troopers with flashing lights, were lined up outside Perry High School in Iowa.
Additional vehicles, including an ambulance, could be seen coming and going this morning.
Today is the beginning of the second semester for the Perry Community School District following the winter break.
Perry High School is part of the Perry Community School District, which is about 25 miles northwest of Des Moines. It serves around 1,785 students, according to its website.
Perry High School in Perry, Iowa.Google Maps
The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the shooting investigation but said no other information is available at this time.
The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that there is an active shooter investigation at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa.
As this story continues to develop, follow updates on our liveblog.
A 17-year-old high school student been identified as the shooter in an incident that occurred at 7:37 a.m. Thursday at Perry High School. The suspected shooter, Dylan Butler, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
One student, a sixth grader at the middle school, was killed. Police said the student may have been at the high school to take part in its breakfast program. Four other students and one school administrator were injured at the scene.
Police say Butler had posted on social media prior to the incident. After arriving at the scene, police say they located Butler, who appeared to have fatally shot himself. He’d been armed with a pump action shotgun and a small-caliber handgun.
Police say authorities also found an improvised explosive device on the scene.
The incident in Iowa has been listed as the fourth mass shooting in the country in 2024, according to the nonprofit database Gun Violence Archive.
The shooting was on the first day of school after winter break, before classes began that morning. Police say because the shooting happened before school started, there were few students and faculty inside the building. However, a few before-school programs were taking place at the high school.
Police response to the incident was enormous, with West Des Moines Police, Urbandale Police, Granger EMS and Iowa State Patrol all reporting to the scene. Both ATF and the FBI are assisting in the ongoing investigation of the incident, according to police.
Perry, Iowa is a town of around 8,000 in Dallas County, situated around 40 miles northwest of the capital city of Des Moines. It is considered part of the Des Moines metro area. The Perry Community School District serves 1,785 students in its elementary, middle and high schools. Perry High School is the only high school in the Perry Community School District. The high school is a minority-majority school, serving a 64% minority population. Perry is one of several spots around the U.S. with a growing Latino population.
Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir. File.
| Photo Credit: AP
An Israeli Minister has called for the return of settlers to Gaza and said Palestinians should be encouraged to leave, a day after similar remarks by another far-right politician.
“We must promote a solution to encourage the emigration of Gaza’s residents,” Israel’s firebrand National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said as war with Hamas rages on.
Israel unilaterally withdrew the last of its troops and settlers in 2005, ending a presence inside Gaza that began in 1967 but maintaining near complete control over the territory’s borders.
The government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not officially suggested it has any plans to evict Gazans or to send Jewish settlers back to the territory. But Mr. Ben Gvir argued the departure of Palestinians and re-establishment of settlements “is a correct, just, moral, and humane solution”.
“This is an opportunity to develop a project to encourage Gaza’s residents to emigrate to countries around the world,” he told a meeting of his ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit, or “Jewish Power”, party.
Mr. Ben Gvir’s comment came the day after Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also called for the return of settlers to Gaza, equally saying Israel should “encourage” the territory’s approximately 2.4 million Palestinians to leave.
The U.S. and France on Tuesday denounced the comments.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington “rejects recent statements from Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir advocating for the resettlement of Palestinians outside of Gaza.”
“We call on Israel to refrain from such provocative declarations, which are irresponsible and fuel tensions,” French Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
An academic research paper claiming people with advance notice of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks made millions of dollars shorting Israel-related stocks, is being slammed by regulators as wildly inaccurate.
Both the Israel Securities Authority and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange said on Tuesday that the paper by two prominent American university professors, published Monday and pointing to an alleged spike in short positions in Israeli stocks, is flat-out wrong.
“The average short balances for shares traded on the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange declined during the period preceding October 7th,” said a statement from the Israel Securities Authority, or ISA, which regulates markets and investigated the alleged short sales.
“The findings of this examination did not raise any concerns regarding suspicious activity on the stock exchange in Israel during the relevant days,” the ISA statement said.
The research paper in question, — “Trading on Terror?” — was co-authored by Professor Robert Jackson Jr. of New York University School of Law, a former Securities and Exchange commissioner, and Professor Joshua Mitts of Columbia Law School, who specializes in corporations and securities.
The paper claimed to document a major short-selling spike in dozens of stocks,as well as in the leading exchange-traded fund linked to a basket of Israeli companies, the iShares MSCI Israel ETF.
“Our findings suggest that traders informed about the coming attacks profited from these tragic events,” the professors’ paper stated. “Consistent with prior literature, we show that trading of this kind occurs in gaps in U.S. and international enforcement of legal prohibitions on informed trading.”
The paper was picked up in news articles around the world.
The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, however, joined the ISA in panning the study as very much off base. “I don’t see in the data something even close to what they wrote in the paper,” said Yaniv Pagot, the exchange’s head of trading, according to Reuters. “There was nothing unusual in short positions in the stock exchange in the two months before the attack.”
The study claimed that it had uncovered a spike in the iShares MSCI Israel ETF, which is traded in the U.S., five days before the attack, based on Financial Industry Regulatory Authority data. The ISA made clear that it did not examine trading outside Israel.
In a short sale, which is a wager that a stock’s price will fall, an investor borrows shares via a broker and immediately sells them, hoping to repay the shares when the price declines, locking in a profit on the difference when it does.
Among other criticisms by regulators was that the two professors confused shekels, the Israeli currency, with agorot, which are one-hundredth of a Shekel’s value, just as a penny is one one-hundredth of a dollar. The flub resulted in ludicrously high estimations by the professors of the alleged profits of the supposed short sellers.
The professors promptly amended the paper.
Jackson, who wasonce viewed as a candidate for chair of the SEC, declined to comment on the record. Mitts did not return phone calls or emails from The Messenger seeking comment. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange did not respond to an email.
The paper has provoked some criticism from short sellers as well.
“The rush to blame short sellers in the wake of the 10/7 attacks on Israeli stocks is indicative of a broader misunderstanding of how short selling works,” wrote Gabriel Grego, founder of short-selling firm Quintessential Capital Management in an email. “Such accusations should be approached with a healthy dose of skepticism and a demand for robust evidence.”
Mitts has been a long-time critic of short-selling tactics in his academic research, and both he and, to a lesser degree, Jackson have sparred with prominent short-sellers over the years. They include Carson Block, founder of Muddy Waters Research, a prominent short-selling firm.
Last year, Block published a white paper attacking Mitts’ research. The short seller drilled into Mitt’s work, detailing“material misrepresentations, omissions of fact, lack of academic integrity, and consistently incorrect statements,” according to the abstract.
Among Block’s many criticisms isthat Mitts has served as an advisor to companies that have been targeted by short-sellers, as well as a paid consultant to the Department of Justice, which is reportedly engaged in a wide-ranging investigation of short-selling.
“I, let’s just say, do not have information that confirms this,” Budanov said on a telethon on Friday evening.
Earlier, information appeared on the network that the alleged chief of the russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov allegedly was killed in Crimea during the Ukrainian attack on January 4.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin speaks during a meeting at the Pentagon on Nov. 22. (Cliff Owen/AP)
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday night following complications from an elective medical procedure, the Pentagon announced Friday.
“He is recovering well and is expecting to resume his full duties today,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s top spokesperson, said in a statement.
The Pentagon statement did not specify what the elective procedure was that led to complications.
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks was “prepared to act for and exercise the powers of the secretary, if required,” according to the statement.
Austin, 70, is not the first senior Pentagon leader to be hospitalized in recent months. Gen. Eric Smith, commandant of the Marine Corps, suffered a heart attack on Oct. 29 and was in a Washington hospital for more than two weeks.
New York Attorney General Letitia James is calling for a $370 million fine against former President Donald Trump and his companies and a lifetime ban on him and two of his former company executives from the real estate industry in the state.
Attorneys from James’ office requested the punishment in post-trial motions filed Friday in the Trump fraud case. They said that Trump owes $168 million of interest allegedly saved through fraud; $152 million from the sale of the Old Post Office building in Washington, D.C., the site of one of Trump’s hotels; $60 million through the transfer of the Ferry Point Golf Course contract; and $2.5 million from severance agreements for former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Howard Weisselberg and ex-Trump Organization controller Jeff McConney.
James also called for lifetime bans for Trump, Weisselberg and McConney from participation in the real estate industry as well as from serving as officers or directors in New York corporations or entities. The attorney general also asked for five-year bans for Trump’s eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, with the same conditions.
The summary judgment in the case found the former president, his company and top executives liable for repeated and persistent fraud in preparing and certifying as true Trump’s statements of financial condition, which were falsely inflated by between $812 million and $2.2 billion.
Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the case, calling the law the lawsuit a partisan “witch hunt,” and has vowed to appeal the judge’s ruling.
James’ office said that Trump and the others committed illegal acts with the intention to defraud and reaped millions in ill-gotten gains. The sum she is seeking is well over the $250 million that she had initially estimated in 2022 that Trump and his business should pay in damages.
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.
Following a tragic Thursday morning Iowa shooting at Perry High School in the town of Perry, where one child was killed, multiple people were seriously injured, and the suspected shooter died of a presumed self-inflicted wound, right-wing extremists and influencers have centered on the shooter’s speculated LGBTQ+ identity based on a Pride flag emoji on a since- disabled TikTok profile.
Late Thursday afternoon, Mitch Mortvedt, assistant director of the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, provided updates on the alleged shooter and the situation.
The Perry Police Department responded to the active shooter event, and upon arrival, they found students and faculty either sheltering in place or fleeing the school, Mortvedt reported. Inside, multiple victims with gunshot wounds were discovered. The shooter, identified as 17-year-old Dylan Butler, a student at Perry High School, was found with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Mortvedt mentioned that Butler was armed with a shotgun and a handgun and had made several social media posts around the time of the shooting.
Mortvedt confirmed that there were six victims in the shooting: one deceased sixth-grade student from Perry Middle School and five others injured, including four students and a school administrator.
While law enforcement has not commented about the alleged shooter’s gender identity or sexual orientation, social media users focused on the appearance of a Pride flag on an account allegedly linked to the shooter, and it led to a narrative amplified by right-wing influencers online. That account is no longer available, but screen grabs of its content have circulated widely on social media.
NEW: Officials have identified 17-year-old Dylan Butler as the student who carried out the shooting at Perry High School in Iowa.nnButler was reportedly an LGBTQ student who identified with the pronouns ‘he/they’ and ‘gender fluid.’nnButler appeared to interact with transgenderxe2x80xa6
— (@)
Chaya Raichik, known for running the anti-LGBTQ+ Libs of TikTok social media accounts, began posting hours before the shooter was identified, alleging him to be gender fluid, based upon a hashtag allegedly included in the person’s social media footprint. She later posted a meme inaccurately linking several mass shooters to the LGBTQ+ community. Elon Musk amplified this idea on the platform X, formerly Twitter.
The meme referenced several shootings: In Tennessee, Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who police said identified as transgender, was responsible for a 2023 school shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville; in Colorado, Anderson Lee Aldrich, behind the 2022 mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, was asserted by their lawyers to be nonbinary. However, this claim has been met with skepticism due to Aldrich’s known anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments. In Denver, Alec McKinney, a transgender teenager, was involved in a 2019 shooting at STEM School Highlands Ranch, and in 2018, in Maryland, Snochia Moseley, identified as transgender, carried out a shooting at an Aberdeen Rite Aid distribution center.
Crucially, the meme included a photo that it claimed was the shooter from the 2022 Uvalde, Texas, school massacre. The shooter was not the person in the image and was not transgender.
Later, Raichik posted from her Libs of TikTok account, “This is the trans genderfluid te*ror*st who shot up a school in Iowa today. Trans extremists are a serious threat. The media will bury this.”
Historically, most mass shooters have not been trans or nonbinary people.
Reuters Fact Check clarifies that the cases pointed out by Raichik represent a tiny fraction of mass shootings. Cisgender men carry out the majority of such incidents. The Violence Project and the Gun Violence Archive confirm that instances involving transgender or nonbinary shooters are exceedingly rare. The Gun Violence Archive recorded over 4,400 mass shootings in the last decade, with known transgender suspects in fewer than 10 cases, translating to about 0.11 percent of all shootings. Additionally, the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center reported that nearly all attackers in mass attacks they studied were male, with only a small fraction being transgender.
While there have been isolated incidents involving transgender or nonbinary people in mass shootings, these are not representative of the broader trend. The predominant demographic of mass shooters remains cisgender men, debunking the narrative propagated by certain right-wing figures and influencers that seek to incorrectly associate mass shootings predominantly with the LGBTQ+ community.
Angela Ferell-Zaballa, executive director of Moms Demand Action, warned against accepting false narratives in the wake of gun violence in a statement to The Advocate.
“We are only days into 2024, and already students are being shot in school,” Ferell-Zaballa said, noting that the gun violence epidemic in America exists because of lax gun laws and lawmaker inaction.
“Extremists often try to muddy the waters by blaming our gun violence crisis on mental health or gender identity, when often people with these lived realities are most likely to be victims of gun violence, rather than perpetrators of it,” she continued. “In the case of the shooting today in Iowa or the countless other acts of gun violence every single day, the common denominator is always the gun and the weak laws that allow these tragedies to happen. This senseless violence needs to stop because sending your children to school shouldn’t be a death sentence.”
Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, also cautioned against accepting these conspiracy theories.
“This news is a tragedy, for those directly harmed, their families, their fellow students and educators, and the broader community. Gun violence is the leading cause of death among children in America today, and it is unequivocally wrong, no matter the shooter or their motive,” Ellis said in a statement to The Advocate. “Media outlets that speculate on the shooter’s identity or their support of LGBTQ rights instead of focusing on those impacted are contributing to a false and sweeping narrative about vulnerable communities. We all deserve to feel safe when going about our lives, and we need to protect our children most of all. Media outlets and leaders have an obligation to humanize the victims and survivors during this painful time, not to sensationalize the harms of gun violence or bring fame to the shooter.”
Humans Rights Campaign national press secretary Brandon Wolf, who survived the horrific 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando also did not hold back in his criticism of Raichik.
“Chaya Raichik, in her never-ending quest for clicks, is using a horrific shooting to try and drum up anti-LGBTQ+ hysteria for her cause. In truth, LGBTQ+ people are disproportionately impacted by gun violence, a reality made worse by those like her, who demonize the community at every turn and peddle dangerous, bogus narratives in exchange for influence. More shameless cruelty from someone whose brand is built on it,” Wolf said.
