VP's niece Meena Harris deleted tweet in which she assumed the Boulder shooting suspect was white

"I made an assumption based on his being taken into custody alive and the fact that the majority of mass shootings in the U.S. are carried out by white men," Meena Harris tweeted in explaining that she had deleted another tweet.

By Alex Nitzberg

Published: March 23, 2021 3:58pm

Updated: March 23, 2021 4:56pm

Vice President Kamala Harris' niece Meena Harris has deleted a tweet in which she assumed that the suspected perpetrator of the fatal shooting at a Boulder, Colorado grocery store was white.

"The Atlanta shooting was not even a week ago. Violent white men are the greatest terrorist threat to our country," Harris said on Monday in the now-deleted tweet, according to Fox News.

"I deleted a previous tweet about the suspect in the Boulder shooting. I made an assumption based on his being taken into custody alive and the fact that the majority of mass shootings in the U.S. are carried out by white men," she explained in another tweet.

The shooting in Colorado on Monday resulted in 10 fatalities including 51-year-old police officer Eric Talley. The suspect, 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, got charged Tuesday with 10 counts of first-degree murder.

According to the New York Times: "A Facebook page that appeared to belong to the suspect, giving his name as Ahmad Al Issa, said he was a wrestler. Both the Facebook page and his record with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation say he was born in Syria in 1999."

The outlet reported that Boulder County district attorney Michael Dougherty stated that the man "lived most of his life in the United States."

CNN has reported that the brother of the suspect stated that the family emigrated from Syria in 2002.