Newly released police records paint a picture of Joshua Jahn, the 29-year-old gunman who killed two people at a Dallas U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in September, as a withdrawn, unemployed young man with a sudden shift in behavior a few years before the attack.
Jahn’s parents told police their son was “completely normal” until he moved to Washington state and returned home believing he had “radiation sickness” and was “allergic to plastic,” according to the documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The records reveal that Jahn began wearing cotton gloves to avoid contact with plastic and was practicing target shooting with a newly purchased rifle just a month before the September 24 rooftop attack.
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Victims and Motive
Jahn killed two detainees—Norlan Guzman-Fuentes, 37, of El Salvador, and Miguel Angel Garcia-Hernandez, 32, of Mexico—and wounded another before taking his own life.
While the records offer no clear motive for the attack, federal authorities previously said Jahn wrote “ANTI-ICE” on a bullet and left handwritten notes indicating he wanted to “ambush and terrorize ICE agents.”
A “Loner” Obsessed with AI
Jahn’s parents described him as a “loner” who rarely conversed, but who was “obsessed” with artificial intelligence technology. They said he spent his days playing computer games in his bedroom at their Dallas-area home.
According to the parents, Jahn’s shift began after returning from a seasonal job harvesting marijuana in Washington state. His parents said he became convinced he had been “exposed to radiation from a nearby facility” while there, referencing a county that was a site for the Manhattan Project. Photographs from the shooting scene showed a car affixed with a map depicting radioactive fallout in the U.S.
Jahn was not diagnosed with or treated for any mental or physical disorders, his parents told the FBI. Records also suggest a strained family dynamic, though his parents continued to financially support their youngest son.
The gunman’s mother told the FBI she had “no idea” her son owned a gun, though he had recently practiced shooting with his father in Oklahoma.
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