The perpetrator of a deadly shooting at a yoga studio in Florida has been identified as racist and misogynist.
Scott Paul Beierle entered Hot Yoga in Tallahassee, Florida on Friday evening, posing as a customer. He then shot and killed two women, Van Vessem, 61, and Maura Binkley, 21. He wounded five others before turning the gun upon himself.
Beierle had been arrested and charge in 2016 with battery after he grabbed a woman’s buttock and slapped her at the pool in an apartment complex. He also was alleged to have grabbed the buttock of another woman in a dining hall at FSU four years prior, but claimed it was an accident.
In 2014, according to BuzzFeed News, Beierle posted a series of misogynist and racist videos to YouTube.
“There are whores in — not only every city, not only every town, but every village,” Beierle ranted during one video.
Beierle also argued against interracial relationships in the video, saying women who are in one have somehow betrayed “their blood.”
The shooter had also praised shooter Elliot Rodger, who is largely seen as a hero amongst the so-called “incel” movement, a largely online-focused number of people who have declared themselves “involuntary celibate.”
“Incels” are misogynists who blame women for their inability to enter a healthy sexual relationship, rather than their own failings.
“I’d like to send a message now to the adolescent males… that are in the position, the situation, the disposition of Elliot Rodger, of not getting any, no love, no nothing,” Beierle said in one video. “This endless wasteland that breeds this longing and this frustration. That was me, certainly, as an adolescent.
Rodger murdered six people and injured 14 others in 2014 in California.
Leon County Sheriff’s Department Booking Photo