Last week’s school shooting at Evergreen High School roiled Colorado yet again.

In a quarter century, our state has endured mass shootings by students at Columbine (1999), Arapahoe (2013) and STEM School Highlands Ranch (2019). In each case, the perpetrators intended mass casualties before killing themselves.

As debates over prevention policies reignite, there’s a disturbing reality that parents, schools and the public cannot ignore: 16-year-old Desmond Holly, who shot two schoolkids before taking his own life, had fallen into online cesspools that worship school shooters.

Three days before Evergreen, CNN reported that the obsession with previous attackers has become a common thread among mass shooters. “For people who want to go down this pathway, they go out of their way to learn about previous attackers, to find role models,” psychologist Peter Langman explained.

This pattern showed up in August, when a shooter killed two schoolchildren and wounded 21 others at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minnesota. His diary revealed he was “morbidly obsessed” with mass shootings, even scrawling other killers’ names on his weapons to “honor past killers.”

Holly’s social media accounts, which were taken down on Friday, indicate he followed the same blueprint.

On TikTok days before Evergreen, he posted a video consisting of a selfie of Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow — the shooter at Abundant Life Christian School in Wisconsin last December — alternated with a selfie of himself imitating hers. Holly’s hoodie read “WRATH” in red paint. “Btw the first one is Samantha Rupnow. Second is me,” Holly clarified in a comment, urging to “look up her… she has a wiki.”

Holly was part of TikTok’s “True Crime Community” that idolizes school shooters. He shared violent video game clips depicting mass shootings and reposted Columbine footage overlaid with “NATURAL SELECTION” — the words shooter Eric Harris wore on his shirt that day. There’s even a subculture for so-called “Columbiners” that, CNN reports, “romanticize and idealize a mythologized version of the shooters as hero outcasts.”

Experts call this “leakage” — hints shooters give, such as through comments made at school or online materials, that telegraph their intentions before they act. “We often say one of the greatest red flags is an unhealthy obsession and fascination with past mass shooters,” James Densley, a Minnesota criminology professor and author, told CNN.

Days before Evergreen, Holly posted a photo of his revolver on X, captioned: “Little .38 special I got.” On the day of the shooting, he reposted it without comment. The parallels to Oxford, Michigan’s 2021 school shooter — who proudly posted his new handgun as his “new beauty” — are chilling.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, Holly was active on WatchPeopleDie. In this online forum, users share and watch images and videos of graphic, real world violence and gore including murders, torture, rape and extremist propaganda — content prone to desensitizing youth and pushing them toward violence. Both Rupnow and this January’s Tennessee school shooter were on the site before their murders.

This appears to be what officials meant when they said Holly was “radicalized by an extremist network.” He also engaged with White supremacists and anti-Semites online. One commenter on his handgun post purported to share messages from Holly expressing depressed feelings and suicidal ideation. That user posts antisemitic material on his X account.

“Part of the investigation obviously involves looking into any social media platforms the shooter may have,” the Jeffco sheriff’s office confirmed to me by email.

Not only is this essential to the investigation, but it’s critical for parents, schools and the public to spot warning signs and watch out for “leakage” and youth exposure to this kind of content.

Kids, too, must be educated — both on the dangers for themselves and on what to notice from their peers, especially online.

Let’s be clear: There is no “Minority Report” for predicting crimes. Frequenting a website isn’t enough, but the propensity toward extreme violence rises when young people immerse themselves in these dark online spaces.

Free speech is one thing. This is something else — violent content infecting kids through TikTok and websites like WatchPeopleDie. Tech companies have banned voices and canceled services over politics, yet somehow, they leave these cesspools wide open to teenagers.

The deeper issue is that most school shooters are loners and outcasts, often with mental health issues. These platforms offer them a “community” with the “only” people who understand — a warped sense of belonging and validation of their darkest impulses.

Hence names like “True Cringe Community.” And that’s the problem.

On Friday, I wrote of the coarsening of American culture and the venom coursing through many veins — from cheers for the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk last week to the glorification of other acts of political violence, notably the assassination of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson.

This same poison surfaced in Evergreen. A vulnerable teen, radicalized by violent subcultures, turned dark fantasy into bloody reality. Whether it’s “otherizing” people we dislike, a mind twisted by evil or a youth seeking belonging through death, the devaluation of human life is becoming a plague.

Parents, teachers, law enforcement, the public — we must all confront this head-on. We must recognize and address red flags, refuse to normalize violence, and recommit to moral clarity. We can’t eliminate every risk, but this may be the only real way to prevent the next Evergreen.

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and longtime local talk-radio host. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @SengCenter.