A group that monitors hate speech and extremism alerted the FBI in July to disturbing internet posts and activity that have now been tied to the 16-yearold Evergreen High student who shot two classmates last week before taking his own life, 9News Investigates has learned.

The tip from the Anti-Defamation League did not include Desmond Holly’s identity or location because the group had not been able to establish either one — but the FBI began investigating.

The tip went to the FBI’s New York field office, according to law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation.

In a statement to 9News Investigates, the FBI National Press Office acknowledged receiving the tip and beginning an investigation:

“In July 2025, the FBI opened an assessment into a social media account user whose identity was unknown and who was discussing the planning of a mass shooting with threats non-specific in nature,” the statement said. “The FBI reviews all tips and pursues credible leads, and allegations of criminal conduct are reviewed for their merit with consideration of any applicable federal laws. We continued to work this assessment investigation to identify the name and location of the user up and until September 10, 2025.

“During the assessment investigation, the identity of the account user remained unknown, and thus there was no probable cause for arrest or additional law enforcement action at the federal level,” the statement said.

No one from the FBI would comment further.

Oren Segal, senior vice president of counterextremism and intelligence at the ADL, also acknowledged the tip in a separate statement.

“The ADL Center on Extremism regularly shares alerts and updates with law enforcement,” the statement said. “We shared profiles and activity at the time with law enforcement for actions they deemed necessary based on what was available at the time. We have since learned those profiles belonged to the individual responsible for the shooting in Evergreen.

“We do not share alerts to law enforcement outside of law enforcement, and there is a current investigation,” the statement said.

Information made public by the ADL showed that his TikTok accounts included multiple references to white supremacist symbolism. Among them was a phrase in his profile name that referenced a slogan popular among white supremacists — and a photograph of himself wearing a skull mask that includes the name of the first of two New Zealand mosques attacked by a mass shooter in March 2019.

In all, the shooter in those assaults killed 51 people and injured 89 others.

The teen had also posted messages online “emulating” the two killers who murdered a dozen students and a teacher — and wounded more than 20 others — at Columbine High School in Jefferson County in April 1999.

Roughly an hour before last Wednesday’s attack in Evergreen, the gunman posted a photograph of a .38-caliber revolver on his X account. He included no comment, but Jefferson County sheriff’s officials confirmed that the shooter used a revolver at Evergreen High.

At the school, he shot two students — critically injuring one and seriously wounding the other — before taking his own life.

It is not clear the exact information the ADL provided to the FBI in July.

On Friday, 9News Investigates first began asking about communications between the organization and the FBI. Neither organization would comment or answer questions, but that same day, the ADL forwarded to news outlets a six-page writeup covering the shooter’s online presence that suggested the group had been amassing information about the boy for months.

For instance, it asserted that the shooter began amassing tactical gear at the same time he was posting

disturbing messages online — something that began, according to the ADL, “months before” he opened fire at the school.

Over that time, the ADL reported that the shooter had “developed a deep fascination with mass shooters,” had “expressed neo-Nazi views,” and had an account on a website dedicated to gore. It was on that site, the ADL reported, the teen-ager posted comments about prior mass shootings in Quebec City, Quebec, in 2017; in Parkland, Fla., in 2018; and in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2022.

It appears that he joined that site on Dec. 26, 2024.

According to the ADL, two other school shooters were also active on that website.

The Evergreen shooter posted a now-deleted TikTok video showing him wearing a tactical helmet and a gas mask, the ADL reported, while the background music featured a song that played while the 2019 New Zealand mosque shooter live-streamed his attack. On that site, the teen also approved of comments on some of his posts — throwing a “thumbs up” after another user wrote, “You got close to a full setup now man time to make a move.”

Another user’s post read, “just need an gopro(sic) its gonan(sic) be cool on pov(sic)” — and the Evergreen shooter responded, “A GoPro, battery, ear protection, and maybe a patch.”

It’s not the first time the FBI has fielded a tip like this about someone who went on to carry out a school shooting.

On Jan. 5, 2018, a phone tip left at the FBI’s national hotline reported that Nikolas Cruz had guns, wanted to kill people, was acting erratically, and was posting disturbing messages on social media platforms.

No one at the FBI followed up on that tip.

Roughly five weeks later, on Feb. 14, 2018, Cruz opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., killing 17 people and wounding 18 others.

Two days after the killings, then-FBI Christopher Ray acknowledged the failure.

“Under established protocols,” the FBI said in a statement, “the information provided by the caller should have been assessed as a potential threat to life. The information then should have been forwarded to the FBI Miami Field Office, where appropriate investigative steps would have been taken.

“We have determined that these protocols were not followed …” the FBI statement said. “The information was not provided to the Miami Field Office, and no further investigation was conducted at that time.”

Colorado has its own history of missed warning signs.

In both 1997 and 1998, the parents of a fellow Columbine High student reported to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office that two classmates appeared to be building pipe bombs and threatening mass death in internet postings. A Jefferson County sheriff’s investigator went so far as to draft a search warrant from one of the boy’s homes, but it was never taken to a judge for review and never executed.

Ten days after those two boys attacked the school on April 20, 1999, Jefferson County officials publicly acknowledged one of those two reports — but kept the other and the existence of that draft search warrant under wraps for nearly two years. It became public only after a news organization sued seeking records and a judge ordered its release.

A month before a University of Colorado graduate student murdered 12 people and wounded more than 70 others in an Aurora theater, his psychiatrist and reported to campus police that he had expressed homicidal thoughts and was a danger to the public.

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