Authorities in Argentina say fatal school shooting linked online ‘TCC’ crime community

The perpetrator of this month’s shocking school shooting in Santa Fe Province was not a victim of bullying and participated in a true-crime Internet sub-culture dedicated to such incidents, say officials in Argentina.

National Security Minister Alejandra Monteoliva confirmed at a press conference midweek that the assailant – identified only as Gino C. due to his age – had engaged with online digital sub-cultures linked to violent conduct.

She implied the attack in the town of San Cristóbal – which severely injured at least eight and claimed the life of 13-year-old pupil Ian Cabrera – at the Escuela Normal Mariano Moreno No. 40 did not come out of nowhere.

“This case is evidently not isolated nor linked to bullying,” said Monteoliva. “Instead we face subdigital cultures formed by youth, children and adolescents to study and analyse murders and mass shootings, which they initial ‘TCC,’ or ‘True Crime Community’ and which have patterns of misanthropic behaviour aiming at admiring violence and carrying it out.”

The minister, speaking alongside Santa Fe Province Governor Maximiliano Pullaro, said that the exhaustive analysis involving Argentina’s Federal Police and the FBI had detected 15 cases in the last two years with four more under analysis.

The TCC (True Crime Community) subculture is an international and digital community that focuses on murders and mass shootings, along with their study and analysis. It is not a group with a centralised physical structure but a virtual transnational alignment with many facets which glorifies violence. 

Members, often teenagers, are fascinated by crime and often sympathise with serial killers and multiple shooters. They often express nihilistic and misanthropic attitudes.

The community traces its symbolic origins to the infamous  Columbine secondary school massacre of 1999 in the United States.

"It’s a case which transcends the frontiers of Santa Fe and which, due to its complexity, requires the intervention of federal forces in co-ordination with the provincial,” explained Virginia Coudannes, secretary of Institutional Management at the Santa Fe provincial Security and Justice Ministry.

The official also confirmed the arrest of a 16-year-old “youth at the age of criminal responsibility” linked to the alleged assailant who, at the very least, had prior information about the attack.

The youth was arrested while travelling in a van together with his parents on the Ruta 11 highway near the locality of Nelson. 

‘Not a psychotic outbreak’

Pullaro noted that the crime "transcends the frontiers of this province and Argentina" and that investigators were working on an international lead.

 “At first it seemed that Gino C. had a psychotic outbreak cause by bullying but investigation by public prosecutors, via digital elements, immediately showed that there was a relationship with these international groups,” said the governor.

“It was not a psychotic outbreak and had nothing to do with bullying. What could be detected is that this youngster participated in an international digital network labelled TCC, which gave him his veneration for violent crimes and murders. 

“This takes us to another level because this no longer has anything to do with what is happening in a community, school, province or country but with membership in an international subculture,” said Pullaro.

Police officials said that they had uncovered the group by checking social media networks, analysing mobile phones and conducting two raids on the home of a youth.

“From that analysis we began to observe the links between this youngster with the other, [who has been] arrested as a close associate,” Pullaro indicated. 

“These people start off by investigating crimes, fascinated by different serial shooters. It originated in 1999, with the massacre at Columbine secondary school in Colorado where two shooters killed 12 fellow-students and two teachers before committing suicide,” the senior police officer detailed.

The attack

The accused – aged 15, identified as Gino C. and recently acquitted on being declared beyond the age of criminal responsibility – had shared messages and videos of school massacres online on forums. 

Gino C. entered the school early on Monday, March 30 with his grandfather’s shotgun hidden in the guitar case he carried all the time so that nobody suspected. He headed to the toilet, loaded the gun and his first shot was inside that place, hurting some schoolchildren. The second, fired a few metres away, hit Ian Cabrera, killing him. 

Then he reloaded and fired two more shots in the direction of the schoolyard whereupon he was overpowered by the school janitor before he could continue. A total of eight students were wounded – six suffered minor injuries and were discharged the same day while two others were seriously wounded and transferred to health centres of greater complexity elsewhere. 

The adolescent remains held in a juvenile detention centre in the provincial capital of Santa Fe, under the evaluation of interdisciplinary teams and in the company of his mother. The prosecution may request that he not return to San Cristóbal, where classes have not yet been restarted. The school continues under police guard.

– TIMES/NA/PERFIL