Daniel Perry, who was convicted of murdering 28-year-old Black Lives Matter protester and military veteran Garrett Foster, posted and sent racist messages for years according to new court records, the Statesman reports.
On Thursday, a Travis County judge in Texas unsealed 76 pages of court documents showing dating back years in which Perry, a U.S. Army sergeant, discussed shooting and killing people, often referencing a desire to harm Muslims and Black people.
In one post, per the report, Perry said: “Black Lives Matter is racist to white people…It is official I am racist because I do not agree with people acting like monkeys.” In another message, sent in 2019, he wrote it was “to [sic] bad we can’t get paid for hunting Muslims in Europe.”
Although the some of Perry’s posts were presented in his trial, including text messages where he talked about killing protesters in the weeks before he fatally shot Foster, the newly unsealed filing revealed additional messages that were not previously presented.
Perry shared memes on Facebook promoting racist rhetoric, per the report, including one that said “If this symbol represents racism in America …(image of Confederate flag) SO DO THESE (image of NAACP logo, Hispanic scholarship fund, American Association for Affirmative Action, BET, UNCP, the democratic party logo, etc.)”
On June 6, 2010, Perry said in a social media discussion that “BLM (Black Lives Matter) is the result of victim mentality.” He also wrote, “Also yes what happened to George Floyd is messed up but he is no martyr. His autopsy showed he had meth and fentanyl in his system.”
In another social media comment, he wrote, “If I were in danger I don’t care who is in my way I am pushing them out of my way to escape I will also repeatedly say I am in fear of my life I will defend myself.”
A day after the murder of Foster on July 26, 2020, Perry sent a message to a friend that said “I was attacked yesterday and I had to defend myself and I need to talk.”
After killing Foster, Perry told police Foster had raised the barrel of his rifle and pointed it at him. “I thought he was going to kill me,” he told police officers on body camera footage of him being taken into custody. Witnesses refuted Perry’s claim that Foster had raised the gun, however, and a prosecutor said it was recovered with the safety on and no bullet in the chamber.
At the time of Foster’s death, according to his mother, he had been pushing the wheelchair of his fiancée Whitney Mitchell, 28, a quadruple amputee. The two were high school sweethearts and had been living in Austin for about two years.
After Perry’s conviction and news of Texas Governor Greg Abbott vow to pardon him, Mitchell spoke with Rolling Stone. “It’s difficult to watch somebody that you love — who was the love of your life and your best friend and who was everything to you — die in front of you, and you can’t do anything about it,” said Mitchell when remembering her fiancée. She added, “It’s been a really hard road to get here. It’s been a really long three years. And to go through everything that we’ve been through and now to hear what’s happening, it’s just horrible. It’s like, when you get to a feeling of being relieved, then it’s all taken away.”