At around 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Evergreen High School student Desmond Holly allegedly entered his school with a gun and began shooting at his classmates.
The 16-year-old student kept firing and reloading a revolver, critically injuring two other students before turning the gun on himself, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. He later died at the hospital.
"I have to believe when you bring a gun to school and you continue to fire and reload, you are on a mission," Sheriff's Office Spokesperson Jacki Kelley said at a news conference on Thursday, adding that they were incredibly fortunate more people were not injured in the event.
The shooting left the small mountain community stunned. Parents and family members wept and hugged one another as they stood in line to pick up their children from the reunification point on Wednesday, just hours after some of those same students had run for their lives.
A shy student
A similar scene unfolded at a vigil on Thursday night, when hundreds of community members gathered. After the event, multiple current and former Evergreen High School students told The Denver Gazette about their experience with Holly, labelling him as a shy, reserved student who didn't have many friends.
"He wasn't a happy person," said Gentry Kaber, a former classmate of Holly's.
Kaber's older sister, Lily, just graduated from Evergreen in the spring and also knew Holly, he said, adding that she called him in a state of panic when she heard the news.
"He would have his hood up, he would just mope around, not very talkative, just stay to himself," Kaber said. "You think if someone ended up doing that at my school or my place of work, would I be a target of that? It's just a scary thought."
But what Holly wasn't shy about was his possession of a handgun. Five days before the shooting, he posted a photo of a handgun to an X account law enforcement sources confirmed was his own, according to 9News. The post was captioned "Little .38 special I got."
He then posted the photo again, this time without a caption, on Wednesday, just over an hour before the first reports came in about the shooting. The gun depicted in the post is the same type of revolver authorities said Holly used.
The son of entrepreneurial parents
Holly's parents, Morgan Holly and Julia Jones, are listed as co-founders of Bitpress, a post-production company that optimizes content monetization, according to its website. One of its recent clients was the BBC, which enlisted the organization to provide insights on its expansive media library, the company said in a March news release.
While both parents have deactivated their LinkedIn accounts, Google search results list each of them as co-founders of the organization. Additionally, while both no longer appear on the company's "About Us" page, an internet archive search reveals they did as of mid-August.
On that page, Morgan is listed as having previous senior roles in engineering, operations and creative production at other post-production companies. Jones is credited with having been the co-founder of four startups.
Bitpress did not respond to a request for comment.
Before Morgan Holly privatized his Facebook profile, The Denver Gazette was able to capture screenshots of several posts. Many of the posts shared anti-Trump sentiments. Some showed people shooting firearms.
One of them, from March 8, showed four people holding hand-drawn posters at a rally at the Capitol in Denver. The caption listed the people as Morgan's niece, a friend, Morgan's daughter and his sister, and noted that Jones and Desmond were also in attendance.
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A screenshot of a post from Morgan Holly's Facebook page, taken before he privatized his account Thursday morning. (Emily Bejarano / The Denver Gazette)
March 8 was the date that the International Women's Day protests took place across the United States. One of the signs held up by the photo's subjects read: "I'd throw eggs at Trump but they are too expensive."
Another post from Jan. 27 showed a figure with a mask on. The caption said that Desmond created it with a 3D printer he got for Christmas.
A screenshot of a post from Morgan Holly's Facebook page, taken before he privatized his account Thursday morning. (Emily Bejarano / The Denver Gazette)
That specific mask -- originally used to depict a character in a David Lloyd graphic novel series "V for Vendetta" -- has been adopted by members and supporters of the hacktivism group Anonymous in recent years.
The group has taken credit for a litany of online attacks on web servers since the mid-2000s, including the U.S. Department of Justice and other government agencies, according to Politico.
A radicalized teen
Kelly said during Thursday's news conference that Holly had been radicalized by an "extremist network," but did not share much more information.
Holly's social media accounts, including his TikTok account, had been removed from their respective sites by Friday afternoon.
The teen had been active on a website that emphasized content about other school shootings and had also been used by other mass attackers, the Anti-Defamation League said on its website Friday. Additionally, he had used terms and symbols associated with neo-Nazis and antisemitic viewpoints.
A TikTok post from a few days before the shooting depicted Holly wearing a shirt that mimicked one worn by one of the attackers in the Columbine High School shooting, a garment he created himself, according to the ADL.
An irreversible impact
The two students wounded in Wednesday's shooting remained hospitalized due to their injuries by Friday afternoon, officials said. One is in critical condition.
One of the victims has been identified as 18-year-old Matthew Silverstone, the sheriff's office said on Thursday. In a corresponding statement, his family asked for privacy. The other victim's family declined to have their child publicly identified.
Evergreen High School may reopen, but could remain closed longer, Kelly said.
"We cannot pretend this is just another tragic incident," said Jefferson County Public Schools Superintendent Tracy Dorland in a statement on Wednesday. "The pain of this incident reopens old wounds. I know there are many in our Jeffco community hurting and grieving tonight, in Evergreen and beyond."
The Denver Gazette's news partner 9News and reporter Emily Bejarano contributed to this report.
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