[bray]

Was he part of the shooting?

[ProtectOurFreedom]

“Was he part of the shooting?”

Does not appear that way. He just wanted to throw the cops off long enough for the shooter to escape.

He’s a long-time Utah kook with mental health problems.

[vivenne]

He was in the crowd.

[RoosterRedux]

That's my question.

It is unusual for someone to have the presence of mind to walk up to the police right after a shooting and surrender. In most high-stress events like a shooting, people either panic and run or freeze in place.

For Zinn to step in, immediately claim responsibility, and frame it as “helping the shooter escape” suggests one of three possibilities:

• Prior knowledge or expectation–He already had some awareness of what was planned, which would explain why he was in position to act quickly.

• Impulse with a preexisting mindset–As a longtime political agitator with prior arrests, he may have been primed to act in a dramatic, disruptive way the moment chaos broke out, without literal foreknowledge.

• Unreliable or irrational motive–His later statements (“wanted to be a martyr”) might point to mental instability. His instability (delusions, martyr complex, etc.) may have created that script, allowing him to act with speed and confidence that looks like presence of mind–but is actually the product of irrational thinking.