Federal prosecutors have charged a Marine with threatening mass shootings of White people, in a case that sheds startling light on the poisonous mix of mental illness, guns and violence.
Joshua Cobb, 23, who was arrested Friday, told investigators he had studied videos of other racially motivated shooters and felt he wanted “to bring the pain” to “a rich white area,” according to the FBI‘s affidavit filed in court to support the arrest.
He also left an extensive series of troubling social media posts about his plans and sick obsessions, including boasting on one site about killing cats with a crossbow. He reveled in a recent kill which he described as a “very bloody scene and I loved it.”
He also said he hoped to become a serial killer to make others feel his pain.
“Nobody [wants to] acknowledge that us young men in America have so many obstacles stacked against us we cannot excel no matter how hard we try,” he wrote in one 2022 post. “Especially those like myself who are BLACK & come from poverty. There is no way out for me. The only way out is bloodshed.”
He said in another post in 2023 that his family had an extensive history of mental illness and he figured he did too, but he wouldn’t get checked out.
“No documented history but I definitely have problems but I refuse to get evaluated because I will lose my firearms license here in America,” he wrote.
When FBI agents interviewed him last month on base at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms in California, he detailed the targets he’d been pondering, including an upscale neighborhood grocery store and a gym.
He mentioned an Aldi store in Robbinsville, New Jersey, as one option and said it would be the “same thing as Payton.” The FBI said that was a reference to Payton Gendron, a White gunman who murdered 10 people at a supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo.
Mr. Cobb said he “liked the element of surprise and style” Gendron showed in slaughtering the shoppers in an attack he livestreamed online.
Mr. Cobb also said he had watched video of Nikolas Cruz, who massacred 17 students at a Florida high school. Mr. Cobb said he “felt a connection” and “felt his pain.”
The FBI‘s affidavit gives extensive details of Mr. Cobb‘s plans for obtaining weapons. He said a buddy had access to guns, and had given him some in the past but he didn’t have them anymore. He also knew someone who would 3D-print a firearm, and had a relative who owned a gun.
“So I had access to guns, to this day, I do,” he said.
When the FBI agents told him they were seizing his cellphone, they said he became irate.
“These are the things that make someone want to do the things we talked about,” he told agents.
On the phone, agents said they found notes detailing Mr. Cobb‘s struggles and plans.
“I currently lack the means necessary to kill as many as I intend to but one day I will have the available resources (finance) to purchase the appropriate weaponry for my killing(s),” read one note from March 2023.
Another note, titled “How to bring firearms into New Jersey,” suggests purchasing a post office box just across the state line in Pennsylvania and then using websites that will ship to PO boxes.