UPDATE: Police revealed more details about the alleged attack in a news conference Thursday. An updated story can be found here. Our original NBC 5 Investigates story continues below.
The man police say was behind a violent plot targeting a suburban worship center is young and looks even younger, and now he’s behind bars.
Alexandros Paporakis is 19 and works as a cashier at a fast-food restaurant. According to police in his northwest suburban hometown of Palatine, Paporakis had plotted to carry out a “mass shooting of Indian people” at a Hindu temple in Aurora, where they say he drove last Sunday decked out for war.
Authorities say the 19-year-old was one malfunctioning rifle away from becoming a mass shooter.
His alleged target was the largest Hindu temple in southwest suburban Aurora. On Sunday the sprawling place of worship was filled with people and filled with joy-when police say a young man showed up “to kill a significant number of Indians,” police say.
But fate had a different outcome in mind for Paporakis, according to a newly filed court record.
Investigators say he had a modified AR-style rifle and 300 rounds of ammo, enough to fill ten magazines for reloading, along with body armor, gasoline cans and an assortment of swastikas.
Paporakis, a Taco Bell employee, allegedly drove from his mother’s home in Palatine to the Aurora temple. Authorities say he tried to open fire but the gun jammed, so he drove home. There he “searched internet trying to learn how to unjam his gun & called a colleague informing them of (his) intent to carry out a mass shooting.”
Several sources familiar with the case say the co-worker then notified police of the plot, and Paporakis was arrested Sunday before he could return to the Hindu temple.
Investigators say they found a manifesto apparently written by the teenager-who called himself the “Aurora Shooter.” The writings “expressed words of hate, violence, superior race and mass shooting of Indian people. His hatred was against Jewish people, African Americans, Indians, & “non-white” people.”
They say he “expressed pleasure calling himself a sociopathic white supremacist Neo-Nazi filled with hatred, fantasizing about mass murder nearly every day.”
Paporakis is facing gun charges and stands accused of making a terrorist threat. A Cook County judge has now ordered him held without bond and has put a jailhouse healthcare order into place for the teenager, noting that he’s being treated for ADHD, depression, anxiety, and receives hormone injections for gender transition.
His public defender tells NBC Chicago that statements from police and prosecutors are only allegations at this point and can change as the investigation continues.
The chairman of the Hindu temple in Aurora tells our team that thankfully they already have a robust security presence, and he’s praising suburban police for foiling the threat against their place of worship.
