It's not really the photos. For me, it's that it's really unusual for him to have had all the evidence on hand. Like the ID, gun, silencer, notes, and a motive on hand, just chilling in McDonalds. He also gave away probable cause to search him by presenting the ID which he should have known was fake. Considering he took concealing steps like using a ghost gun, ditching his backpack, and making a relatively clean getaway, it's pretty odd.

Still it's obviously possible that he wanted to be caught or was exhausted... or just dumb enough to not think of that.

It IS a big thing that the evidence hasn't been presented officially yet. There's a lot of media talk implying that he's the guy but trial by media is not a verdict

[–] GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think that the gun and everything else were dumped and found and the cops are saying he had them on him when he didn't. I think they know it's him, but they didn't use legal means to identify him (parallel construction). They might have used some kind of new way of tracking people that they don't want to reveal to the public.

[–] spireghost@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh yeah, definitely. I mean they definitely ran more than face detection software.

They probably got thousands of tips and chose to respond to the one randomly in Altoona based on other knowledge they had.

It's crazy to me that parallel construction is allowed.

[–] GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

I suppose you could use targeted social media algorithms to target people within a certain area who are service workers who are more likely to see him. So they could theoretically manipulate people into better recognizing him.

[–] Coreidan@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The thing that gets me is the “ghost gun” they found on him doesn’t look like a 3D printed gun according to the pictures that were released. It looks like a typical factory manufactured pistol with a metal slide and a metal barrel. Both machined. He would have spent a lot of needless time adding this much detail to the gun, like the grips on the machined metal slide. Why put so much effort into something like that?

Everything on that gun looks highly machined. This isn’t what you would expect from a home brewed 3D printed gun.

Now it could be they just took a random gun and photoed it to make the media happy and didn’t want to show the actual gun. But it’s odd.

[–] brown567@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

"3d printed guns" aren't all homebrew. Usually with guns you can just buy literally every part except for a certain part that's serialized and legally considered to be "the gun" (ship of Theseus style; any other part can be replaced and it's the same gun, but if that one's different it's a different gun)

It's pretty trivial to print only that part and buy the rest. Also completely legal in many states, here's a website with a bunch of examples:

https://www.printyour2a.com/frames

[–] MutilationWave@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

This is new to me. Got a link to the photos of the supposed murder weapon?