VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — More than three years after a gunman killed 12 people and injured four in a mass shooting at the Virginia Beach Municipal Center - a laptop, purportedly belonging to the shooter, has surfaced.
Delegate Kelly Convirs-Fowler claims she has it.
She said while cleaning the condo to be sold, the shooting victim’s sister found a hard drive, disks, and a laptop – and turned it over to Convirs-Fowler.
David Cariens, a retired CIA analyst, is calling the laptop a “treasure trove of evidence.”
“I do believe it is real," Cariens said. “There are very serious questions revolving around this laptop. And the little bit that I’ve seen makes me believe that absolutely, this is the genuine thing and that indeed Delegate Fowler does have it.”
Cariens is a member of the Virginia Beach mass shooting commission tasked with investigating the gunman's background and motive for the shooting.
He said the laptop could have a lot of personal information about the shooter and details on his mental state and what led up to the shooting.
“Who was he interacting with? What sites was he going on? How well was he preparing this shooting rampage?" Cariens questioned.
Cariens is questioning why authorities didn’t find the laptop during their initial search of the shooter’s home.
"Common sense from the outset told me there was a laptop someplace," Cariens said.
Investigators with the Virginia Beach Police Department searched the gunman’s home right after the shooting and found weapons, ammunition, documents, tablets, thumb drives, cameras, SD cards, and cell phones. Officers never found a laptop. FBI agents also never found a laptop and neither agency has evidence the gunman owned one.
“Did the Virginia Beach police not really do a search? Did they do a haphazard search? Or did someone else get access to that condo before the police got there?" Cariens questioned. “To make a flat assertion that someone that well educated and in that position does not have some sort of a laptop or computer is frankly jaw-dropping. I didn’t believe it from the outset but you had to accept it.”
Delegate Convirs-Fowler has said she doesn’t want to hand over the laptop to the police, instead, she wants a third party to analyze the laptop.