The Neo-Nazi founder
of an anti-immigrant border militia is believed to have shot and killed four
people before turning a gun on himself following a domestic dispute at a home
in a Phoenix suburb, police said on Thursday.
Police believe Jason
Todd "J.T." Ready opened fire at a house in Gilbert on Wednesday,
killing his girlfriend, her daughter, the daughter's boyfriend and the young
couple's toddler daughter. He then shot himself, Gilbert Police Sergeant Bill Balafassaid.
Ready, 39, founded the
U.S. Border Guard group, a private-citizen militia in Arizona that advocated
deadly force to stop illegal immigration over the border from Mexico.
Ready had long-held
ties to neo-Nazi groups in the United States, the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center said on their websites.
"We are under
attack at this very moment but not by invading troops (yet) or communistic
threat. ... What or who is it you ask? Just look around your neighborhoods and
your schools. Look at the violence on T.V. Look at the border," Ready said
in a posting on his group's website.
Police identified the
dead as Lisa Lynn Mederos, 47,
who they said was Ready's girlfriend; Amber Nieve Mederos, 23; Jim Franklin Hiott, 24; and
15-month-old Lily Lynn Mederos, who
was still alive at the scene but later died in a hospital.
Police found the child
and the bodies of two adults inside the home and those of the other adults
outside.
"We feel safe to
say that this was a domestic violence issue. There was an argument, and this is
purely a domestic situation," Balafas said.
Amber Mederos worked
at a nearby Wendy's restaurant, and was reported to be in the process of moving
out of her mother's home because of tensions with Ready, who also lived there.
TIME TO MAKE A BETTER
LIFE
Her final posting on
Facebook on Tuesday evening read: "Time to get the drama out of (my) life
and make a better life for me my daughter and my love."
At the time of the
shooting, a female witness was in the home. Balafas said "she heard
arguing, she heard gunshots (and) came through a back bedroom and located the
bodies."
Officers recovered two
handguns and a shotgun from the scene on Wednesday. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said six grenades were also retrieved from the
house by a bomb disposal unit from Luke Air Force base, near Phoenix.
"The reason we
contacted them is because it is military ordnance," ATF agent Tom Mangan
told Reuters. He said the explosives were live, and investigators were tracing
the serial numbers on them to determine their provenance.
A profile of Ready by
the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center said he had attended neo-Nazi
gatherings in Nebraska and Phoenix, and railed
against Jews and "Negroid immigration" in white nationalist online
forums.
He advocated deadly
force to stop Mexicans from crossing into the United States illegally, and
favored laying a minefield along the U.S. border, the center said.
A chilling propensity
to violence was apparent in a blog posting by Ready on the U.S. Border Guard website.
"Some of us have
our fingers on the triggers; Soap box. Ballot Box. Ammo box. These were given
to us by our founding fathers and mothers," Ready wrote. "We have
just about depleted the first two options."
Police had been called
to the house on five previous occasions, for incidents including domestic
violence, disorderly conduct and suspicious activity. None of the incidents
resulted in charges being brought.
Eze 35:5- Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and
hast shed [the blood of] the children of Israel by the force of the sword in
the time of their calamity, in the time [that their] iniquity [had] an end:
Oba 1:10- For [thy] violence against thy brother Jacob shame shall
cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off for ever.
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