Many of the tweets could have been written by an average young man living in the United States. User @Zac_Penton discussed Pokemon Go, girls, hitting the gym and riding a motorcycle. He was excited when Frank Ocean dropped a new album. He enjoyed firing guns – not exceptionally noteworthy in a time when one in three Americans owns a gun – and he was vocal about his firearms, tweeting last week that he needed two boxes of 9 mm ammunition “stat.”
Still, a few messages stood out. When someone else wrote about an encounter with a “crazy lady,” @Zac_Penton replied with a photo of a hand brandishing a Ka-Bar military knife, saying he kept the weapon “close for situations like this.”
And then there was the discussion of murder.
“I need to move out of my place before I viciously murder my roommates” he wrote just after midnight Aug. 20, “they literally just got into a drunk fight after one of them was stung by a bee, like wtf.” Taken alone, perhaps the tweet could have been dismissed as dramatic hyperbole. But within a matter of hours, the message was cast in a far darker light.
Late Sunday morning, Aug. 21, a 21-year-old man named Zachary D. Penton called 911. Penton said he had shot and killed his roommate, 41-year-old Daniel Garofalo. The pair had lived in a house in Gilbert, Ariz.; Penton had moved in about two months before.
There had been a fight, Penton said. He told police that Garofalo said the younger man had to move out of the home, reported ABC 15. During the ensuing altercation, as Penton later told authorities, he became afraid for his safety and reportedly shot Garofalo.
“Zachary stated the homeowner entered Zachary’s bedroom, told him he was going to kill him if Zachary did not move out of the house, and tackled Zachary to the bed,” according to the probable cause statement obtained by KPHO.
Penton withdrew the Glock 17 from beneath his pillow, the statement said, aimed at Garofalo’s chest and shot two times, according to KPHO. Penton left the house, placed the Glock on the driveway and waited outside for the police to arrive.
The Gilbert Police Department told Tucson News Now that Garofalo died in the home. The gunshot wound was to the head. Authorities recovered the handgun at the scene, and they say Penton is cooperating with the investigation.
“Zachary said he was scared and that was why he shot the homeowner,” according to the probable cause statement. “When asked if he would change anything, Zachary said he would not” as he had survived the encounter unharmed.
Penton is being held on a $750,000 bond, with an open charge of felony murder in the second degree. A hearing has been set for Aug. 29. The Gilbert Police Department was not able to immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post.
Authorities are investigating the Twitter account to determine whether the words were in fact written by Penton. The account, which was created in September 2011, shows pictures of Penton, and in one message correctly notes that his middle name is Dale.
The Daily Beast tracked @Zac_Penton’s outspoken desire to obtain a gun back to Dec. 2012, a few days before Penton’s 18th birthday. Three and a half years later, on June 3, he appeared to fulfill that desire, tweeting about how remarkably simple it was to purchase a weapon.
And on June 16, he discussed the inadvisable nature of some tweets: “People tweet some dumb s–.”
As of this writing, the tweet discussing the murder of @Zac_Penton’s roommates had been shared across the social media platform nearly 35,000 times. “Lesson learned: always follow your roommates on Twitter,” went one of the many replies.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Ben Guarino
