The teenager who opened fire yesterday, Wednesday, at a school in southern Turkey, killing nine people, including eight of his classmates, had paid tribute to the perpetrator of a misogynistic massacre in the United States, Turkish police said today.

“Preliminary evidence of the investigation showed that the perpetrator used an image on his WhatsApp profile that referred to Elliot Roger, who committed an attack in the US in 2014,” according to a statement released by the Turkish police general directorate.

The boy’s father – a former police inspector – was arrested and is being held, according to the same source.

Elliott Roger committed a massacre in Isla Vista, California, in 2014. The youth had killed six people on a Santa Barbara campus before killing himself. He explained in a video he recorded before the massacre that he would commit the attack as “punishment” for women who rejected him.

The perpetrator of yesterday’s massacre, 14, is dead, the governor of Kahramanmara province, Mukherem Unlier, said yesterday, without being able to specify whether “it was a suicide” or whether his death was due to “the chaos” that ensued.

“Computer material seized during searches at the perpetrator’s residence and his father’s vehicle (…) is being analyzed at the moment,” and “according to the initial data gathered, no connection to terrorism is established, it appears to be an isolated incident,” according to Turkish police.

“A student arrived at the school with what appeared to be his father’s guns in his backpack,” then “entered two classrooms and started firing indiscriminately,” Mr. Unlier said, the day after a similar incident, with sixteen people injured, at a high school some 200 kilometers east of there.

These kinds of violent incidents are generally rare in Turkey, although a Turkish foundation estimates there are tens of thousands of guns in circulation in the country — most of them undocumented and illegal.