Police on Friday arrested a 25-year-old Dayton Beach, Florida, man after his ex-girlfriend alerted them to text messages he sent her indicating he was planning a mass shooting, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.
The man, Tristan Scott Wix, allegedly sent messages describing a school as “a weak target” and saying he would be “more likely to open fire on a large crowd of people from over 3 miles away.”
{mosads}“I’d wanna break a world record for longest confirmed kill ever,” Wix allegedly said in the texts.
In another message, Wix allegedly wrote “Was kinda hoping someone would come into my life worth not doing it for, for the sake of all those people,” accompanying the text with the “crying laughing” emoji.
“I’m not crazy I just wanna die and I wanna have fun doing it, but I’m the most patient person in the world,” he added. The texts allude to “already hav[ing] a location” in mind.
Wix was arrested Friday in the parking lot of a Winn Dixie grocery store and told detectives he was fascinated by mass shootings but does not own any firearms, according to the sheriff’s department. The department said sheriff’s detectives are currently in the process of obtaining a search warrant for his home. Wix is being held without bond.
The arrest comes weeks after two mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, killed at least 31 people within 24 hours of one another.