Over a week later on June 6, Santa Cruz County sheriff's deputies were shot at and also attacked with improvised explosive devices; one of them died as a result.
Carrillo is alleged to have written "boog" and the phrase "I became unreasonable" (a popular meme among boogaloo groups) in his own blood on the hood of a vehicle he hijacked.
[5] According to federal authorities, the suspects were motivated by the boogaloo movement's ideology, and allegedly intended to spread its extremist views and start a civil war.
[6][7] At around 9:44 pm PDT on May 29, 2020, an initially unknown assailant (later identified as Carrillo) fired a rifle out of the sliding door of a white van, striking security personnel stationed outside the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building in Oakland, California.
[8][9][10][11] Two Triple Canopy security officers contracted with the Federal Protective Service were shot, resulting in the death of David Patrick Underwood and serious injury to the other.
[14] On October 23, 2020, the U.S. Attorney's Office in the District of Minnesota announced they had filed federal charges against another boogaloo adherent and alleged agent provocateur who had traveled from Texas to Minneapolis to participate in a George Floyd protest on May 27–28, 2020.
[15] In response, Carrillo allegedly replied, "I did better lol", which prosecutors believe was a reference to killing Underwood blocks away from the unrelated Black Lives Matter protest.
He was on active duty at Travis Air Force Base near Fairfield, California, as an airman in the Phoenix Ravens program,[14][21] a special unit tasked with guarding American military personnel and aircraft at unsecure foreign airfields.
[23] An abandoned white van that held firearms, ammunition, and bomb-making equipment contained evidence that led to Carrillo's home in Ben Lomond.
[25] The FBI announced on June 16 that Steven Carrillo was associated with the boogaloo movement and that he and Justus had deliberately chosen the night of protests in Oakland for cover for the May 29 attack.
[14] "I became unreasonable" is a popular phrase in boogaloo memes, and is a quote from Marvin Heemeyer, the perpetrator of the 2004 "Killdozer" rampage in which he demolished several buildings over a zoning dispute.
[34] During his arraignment, Carrillo wore a face mask with the words "We the people" written in marker, along with initials "BLM" and "Portland, Kenosha, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor".
[35] Preliminary hearings for charges related to the Oakland shooting were slated for December 2020 but postponed to March 2021 because of the ongoing case around the attack in Ben Lomond, in which a Santa Cruz County deputy sheriff was slain and others were injured.
He admitted that he visited Facebook the day before the shooting to ask if anyone was "down to boog", connecting with the man who drove the van from which Carrillo fired 19 rounds from a homemade AR-15.
Fox News anchor Eric Shawn spoke of the George Floyd protests, saying "we have been under attack from domestic terrorists," then reported Underwood's killing.
[43] On June 1, then-President Donald Trump repeated the claim in a speech about the protests, saying, "A federal officer in California, an African American enforcement hero, was shot and killed.
"[42] During his August 2020 speech at the Republican National Convention, then-Vice President Mike Pence falsely implied that Underwood had been killed by radical leftist activists.
[44][45] Rebecca Kaplan, the City Councilmember At-Large for Oakland, California, denounced Pence's statement, saying, "Mr. Underwood's tragic murder was not part of any demonstration, but an act of a violent, armed white supremacist... Pence's lies attempt to discredit important movements for social justice, and to move blame away from violent white supremacist murder.