{"id":328805,"date":"2026-05-23T02:39:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T02:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/328805\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T02:39:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T02:39:13","slug":"reichert-profiled-shooting-suspect-in-now-deleted-2025-article","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/328805\/","title":{"rendered":"Reichert profiled shooting suspect in now-deleted 2025 article"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Amy<\/a>Amy Reichert, a conservative activist, interviewed one of the suspects in the Islamic Center of San Diego attack last year for an article that the conservative website IW Features deleted after the attack. (Photo by Chris Stone\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

The conservative website IW Features this week deleted an article published last year by San Diego activist Amy Reichert that profiled one of the teenagers suspected in Monday\u2019s attack on the Islamic Center of San Diego<\/a>, detailing his criticism of his school\u2019s ethnic studies course.<\/p>\n

Reichert\u2019s June 2025 article \u2014 \u201cThis California Family is Fighting Back Against a Mandatory White Privilege Curriculum<\/a>\u201c\u2014 argued that the teen felt \u201csingled out\u201d and \u201ctargeted as a person of lesser value\u201d by the class because he came from a mixed-race background.<\/p>\n

The FBI this week said the two shooting suspects were radicalized online, where they met and bonded over white supremacist propaganda<\/a>. In a 75-page document outlining his white supremacist ideology, the suspect espoused hatred to Islam, immigrants, Jewish people, Black people, women and trans and gay people, among other groups. He wrote that his \u201creligion is the white race.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reichert\u2019s article, which identified the suspect and his mother<\/a> with pseudonyms, does not discuss guns.\u00a0 But IW Features removed the article immediately after the attack because of the \u201ccriminal allegations\u201d against the person profiled, the site\u2019s editor said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIW Features maintains high standards of integrity and credibility from its storytellers, including those published pseudonymously,\u201d said Andrea Mew, managing editor of IW Features, in an email to Times of San Diego. \u201cAfter public criminal allegations surfaced concerning an individual whose comments were featured in one article, IW Features removed the article by a contributing writer from its website.\u201d<\/p>\n

IW Features, an online commentary site, says it supports \u201cgrassroots storytelling\u201d and \u201cpolicies that reduce government red tape and return resources and control to people, so that we have healthy communities and people can pursue their own visions of happiness.\u201d The site continues to list Reichert as a contributor. The article is still available on Web Archive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A day after the shooting, Reichert shared excerpts<\/a> of the suspects\u2019 hate-filled document\u00a0 in a stream of social media posts. The suspect\u2019s names were known then, but she did not mention that she had interviewed the shooter and his mother last year.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, she disclosed her connection<\/a> on social media and in an appearance on One America News Network<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She told Times of San Diego that it did not immediately occur to her that she had spoken to the suspect, and she needed to put the pieces together by going through her text exchange with the suspect\u2019s mother after the mother reached out to her in April of 2025. \u201cIn no way am I suggesting that taking an ethnic studies class had anything whatsoever to do with this shooting,\u201d Reichert told Times of San Diego.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The May 18 attack<\/a> on the Islamic Center left three people dead<\/a>. The two teens were found dead nearby, police said, of self-inflicted gunshot wounds.<\/p>\n

The parents of the teen in Reichert\u2019s profile have not addressed the shooting publicly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The other suspect\u2019s family issued a statement Thursday apologizing for the devastation their son\u2019s actions caused.<\/p>\n

\u201cExposure to hateful rhetoric, extremist content, and propaganda spread across parts of the internet, social media, and other online platforms, contributed to his descent into radicalized ideologies and violent beliefs,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amy Reichert, a conservative activist, interviewed one of the suspects in the Islamic Center of San Diego attack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[134041,134804,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-328805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-islamic-center-of-san-diego","tag-islamic-center-shooting","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}