Police Say Hate Motivated the Venture-N Shooting. The Internet Has Other Theories.

Almost nothing is known about the gunman who killed two members of Tucson’s LGBTQ+ community in what police have described as a hate-motivated attack at a local gay bar.

Police have confirmed that the gunman was 44-year-old Ousman Ceesay, that he migrated from The Gambia and that he recently moved from Oklahoma to Tucson. Beyond that, investigators have released few details about who Ceesay was, what led him to Tucson or what happened in the hours before he opened fire.

What police have been clear about is the motive.

Investigators said they found a list of other queer-friendly spaces Ceesay allegedly intended to attack. Police later said in a news release that Ceesay acted alone and that there was evidence during a search of his home that the shooting “was a targeted attack motivated by hate toward the LGBTQIA+ community.”

But as investigators have worked to establish what happened, a different narrative has taken hold online — one that has attempted to fill in the blanks about Ceesay’s background and motive with speculation, and zero evidence.

Far-right influencers and politicians, as well as some people within the LGBTQ+ community, have been quick to suggest that the shooting was not primarily an act of anti-LGBTQ+ hate, but instead was inspired by radical beliefs. 

There is no evidence publicly available to support that claim.

Within hours of Tucson police releasing Ceesay’s name — after he shot and killed Vincent “Vinny” Anthony Siqueiros, 42, and Cameron Davis Capara, 33, in the parking lot of Venture-N before later dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound — right-wing social media accounts began filling the information vacuum with their own theories.

The day after the attack, gay right-wing pundit Andy Ngo took to X to claim Ceesay was an “African Muslim” and characterize the shooting as part of a pattern of violence by “extremist Muslims” against LGBTQ+ people.

The Gambia is predominantly Muslim, but that fact alone does not establish Ceesay’s religion, much less his motive for the shooting.

Ngo, a senior editor at Canadian conservative news website The Post Millennial, also used the post to criticize LGBTQ+ organizations that support Muslim communities and pro-Palestinian causes. He specifically cited Capara’s work as a photojournalist and criticized his involvement in left-wing causes, including opposition to immigration enforcement and Israel’s war in Gaza.

“He advocated anti-American views and supported mass illegal migration,” Ngo wrote of Capara.

Other prominent right-wing figures, including Republican New York City Council member Vickie Paladino and former comedian-turned-MAGA pundit Rob Schneider, shared similar claims on social media.

Prominent atheist and conservative commentator Peter Boghossian cited Ngo’s claims and questioned why the press “won’t report a relevant fact about motive and pattern” — a motive and pattern that, at this point, have not been confirmed by investigators.

The speculation quickly moved from social media into conservative media.

Headline USA published a story under the headline “Muslim Man Kills Reported Antifa Affiliate in Gay Bar Shooting,” citing Ngo’s assertion that Ceesay was Muslim. A Gateway Pundit story cited unidentified reports that “Ceesay was born in the Gambia where about 95% of Gambians are Muslim.”

RAIR Foundation, a far-right media organization, went further, calling Ceesay a “jihadist” and arguing that his motive was “beyond obvious” because “Muslims do not tolerate those who are gay, regardless of what the left claims.”

(It’s important to note that there are other religions — including evangelical Christians and American Christian nationalists — that have called for the erasure and sometimes the mass deaths of LGBTQ+ people.) 

None of those outlets provided evidence establishing that Ceesay was Muslim, that he was a jihadist or that Islamic extremism played a role in the shooting.

Other conservative accounts used Ceesay’s name itself to speculate about his background.

Art Del Cueto, a longtime Border Patrol union official in Arizona, posted: “The shooter’s name was Ousman Ceesay?? Not a common name, when will his place of origin and legal status be talked about??”

The premise is wrong. Ousman Ceesay is a common name.

In partnership with the Sunlight Research Desk, LOOKOUT corroborated that the name is common enough to be roughly analogous to a name like John Smith. Although we identified Ceesay through LexisNexis records and Whitepages reports, the gunman is otherwise difficult to trace through publicly available records. We found no apparent social media presence and few records that could be definitively tied to him.

A Gay Bar Opens its Doors After a Massacre

At Venture-N, friends of Cameron Capara and Vincent Siqueiros returned to mourn, remember and reclaim the place they call home.

LOOKOUTJohn Washington (he/him)

We also searched records for aliases associated with Ceesay. That search found one Ousman Ceesay with an alias who was convicted and jailed for a number of crimes, including trafficking. We could not establish any connection between that person and the gunman.

We searched for an address record for Ceesay in Tucson, too. Because of his recent move, it is possible that those records had not yet appeared in the databases we searched. We found no available Tucson address records we could confidently attribute to him.

That lack of information has created an information vacuum. And into that vacuum, social media has supplied a narrative that the Tucson killings were an example of Muslim violence against LGBTQ+ people —  an unsubstantiated assertion. 

Others have offered a competing theory, claiming Ceesay was radicalized by anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric from lawmakers, online activists and far-right media. They have pointed to the Trump administration and Arizona lawmakers’ anti-transgender rhetoric and policies, arguing that a political climate hostile to LGBTQ+ people may have contributed to the attack.

That theory is also unsubstantiated.

An important distinction exists between those competing narratives and what investigators have actually established.

Police have not said Ceesay was motivated by Islam. They have not said he was a jihadist. They have not said his political beliefs or online activity led him to the shooting.

They have said they found evidence that he targeted LGBTQ+ spaces and that the shooting was motivated by hate toward the LGBTQ+ community. That is the clearest finding available right now.

Some Arizona Republicans have kept their responses focused on the victims rather than the speculation.

U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, the Republican candidate for governor, called the killings “horrific and senseless” and said such violence “has no place in our society.” U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, whose district includes Tucson, similarly called the attack “senseless” and said there is “no place for this kind of hate or violence in our local communities.”

The Arizona chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations also condemned the shooting.

“We are disgusted by this hate crime and unequivocally condemn the hatred and violence that led to it,” Azza Abuseif, executive director of CAIR-Arizona, said. “No one should have to live in fear because of who they are.”

For now, the most consequential fact about Ceesay’s motive is also the one most firmly established: Investigators say Siqueiros and Capara were killed in a targeted attack motivated by hate toward the LGBTQ+ community.

Everything beyond that requires evidence.