A gunman who opened fire at an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement facility and killed a migrant was a recluse with an all-consuming habit.
Joshua Jahn, 29, spent 17,400 hours in the run up to Tuesday’s shooting in Dallas playing video games, including violent shoot-em-up adventures.
Jahn, who killed himself after gunning down an as-yet unidentified migrant, was particularly fond of Rust, according to data analysis performed by the Daily Mail.
The wilderness survival adventure, first released in 2018, occupied 6,800 hours of Jahn’s time and he last played the game on Saturday.
Hours before the shooting he played Team Fortress 2, on which he racked up 3,462 hours total, and Left 4 Dead 2, bringing his total to 1,213 hours.
Another most-played title was ARK: Survival Evolved, a 2017 fantasy survival game he played for 3,563.5 hours, according to data from online gaming platform Steam.
Jahn’s fondness for gun-based games likely gave him some practice for Wednesday morning’s murder.
He ‘fired indiscriminately’ from a roof overlooking the Dallas facility and rained bullets on the migrants as they were being moved to an unmarked ICE van.
No motive for the shootings has been definitively identified, although bullets were inscribed with the words ‘ANTI-ICE.’ Friends and family described a downward spiral that alienated Jahn from society.
Joshua Jahn, 29, opened fire on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention camp in Dallas about 7am on Wednesday before killing himself
Jahn’s profile on Steam – an online gaming store – showed he played about 17,400 hours on various games as recently as the day of the shooting
Steam didn’t record how far back his gaming history went, but a comment on his profile indicated it was active since at least 2015.
Jahn played under 10 different usernames with the account named ‘Farmers Alliance Of America’, including #Impeachment, with his most recent being Sam I Am – a Dr Seuss reference.
He only played 3.6 hours in the past two weeks, likely because he was obsessively planning his attack.
FBI Director Kash Patel claimed on Thursday morning that searches of Jahn’s home ‘indicates a high degree of pre-attack planning’.
Jahn downloaded a document named ‘Dallas County Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management’ containing a list of DHS facilities, Patel said.
His search history in the days before the shooting included ‘Charlie Kirk Shot Video’, ballistics, and apps that tracked the presence of ICE agents.
Patel claimed a handwritten note found at the scene read: ‘Hopefully this will give ICE agents real terror, to think, ‘is there a sniper with AP (armor piercing) rounds on that roof?”
His favorite game was Rust, a wilderness survival released in 2018, that he played for 6,800 hours, most recently on Saturday
Hours before the shooting he played Team Fortress 2, on which he racked up 3,462 hours total. He posted this screenshot from the game to his profile years earlier
The FBI earlier released a photo of unused rounds Jahn was allegedly carrying, one of which had ‘ANTI-ICE’ scrawled on it in blue ink.
Bullets used by alleged Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson also had words written on them, as did those Luigi Mangione allegedly used in the murder of UnitedHealthcare boss Brian Thompson.
Republicans claimed Jahn’s shooting was an attack on ICE agents by a left-wing radical, but his friends said he wasn’t political.
Instead he was an ‘edgelord’ who increasingly drove away friends with overly aggressive, deliberately offensive attempts at humor.
He increasingly spent his free time gaming and posting on notorious anonymous forum 4chan, where his outbursts fit right in.
‘I mostly stopped talking to him when he took his 4chan/irony stuff into daily interactions,’ one friend told writer Ken Klippenstein.
‘He was becoming unbearable… once he dropped out of college he had no obligation to be social and none of us reached out due to his edgelord behavior.’
One example was when he spammed his friends’ Facebook pages with rape jokes in comments on their posts.
Jahn search history in the days before the shooting allegedly included ‘Charlie Kirk Shot Video’, ballistics, and apps that tracked the presence of ICE agents
FBI Director Kash Patel released images of bullets found at the scene of the shooting on Wednesday, showing ‘anti-ICE’ scrawled on the shells in blue ink
The victims were ICE detainees, and no law enforcement were injured in the shooting
All his friends, who knew his as far back as age eight, said Jahn wasn’t political and though he expressed disgust with Donald Trump, he hated both sides equally.
‘He was never really into politics, especially not politicians. He was into politics only in the 4chan sense — contrarian, provocative, boundary-pushing for laughs, not conviction,’ one said.
‘Josh was an edgelord who wanted someone to get blamed. I think he tried his best to write something goofy… to rile people up.’
His brother Noah told NBC News that he did not believe Jahn was especially interested in politics and had not voiced his opinions on immigration before.
‘He didn’t have strong feelings about ICE as far as I knew,’ his brother said.
Noah said his brother was unemployed but had previously worked as a coder, and was planning on moving in with their parents in Oklahoma.
Jahn was arrested in 2015 for selling marijuana, but the felony charges were later dropped. He has no history of violence.
He was a registered independent in the 2024 election, but last voted in the Democratic primaries in March 2020, records showed.
Law enforcement said that the sniper perched on a roof adjacent to the facility and rained bullets on the migrants as they were being transported in an unmarked ICE van
Investigators said Jahn fired ‘indiscriminately’ at the ICE office, peppering the transport van with bullets and also hitting windows in the building numerous times
As investigators descended on the scene in Dallas, images showed a poster taped to the side of a vehicle believed to belong to Jahn
The poster read: ‘Radioactive fallout from nuclear detonations have passed over these areas more than 2x since 1951’
Jahn’s brother spoke before he knew that his brother had been identified as the sniper, and described him as ‘unique’ without elaborating.
‘I didn’t think he was politically interested,’ he continued, saying he had last seen him two weeks before the shooting on Wednesday and nothing seemed unusual.
‘He wasn’t interested in politics on either side as far as I knew.’
The siblings grew up in Allen, Texas, and spent their childhoods attending the Boy Scouts, the brother said.
He added that his brother knew how to use a rifle that his parents owned, but insisted that ‘he’s not a marksman, that’s for sure.’
Asked about the ICE facility shooting, he remarked: ‘He would not be able to make any shots like that.’
As investigators descended on the scene in Dallas, images showed a poster taped to the side of a vehicle believed to belong to Jahn.
A sign with what appears to be black splatter on the car reads: ‘Radioactive fallout from nuclear detonations that’ve passed over these areas more than 2x since 1951.’
Investigators said Jahn fired ‘indiscriminately’ at the ICE office, peppering the transport van with bullets and also hitting windows in the building numerous times.
