‘Brony’ FedEx gunman wanted to be with My Little Pony horse ‘in the afterlife’

The teenage gunman who killed eight at a FedEx facility appears to have been obsessed with the children's cartoon My Little Pony.

Brandon Hole's Facebook page suggests he was a member of the "brony" internet community, the Wall Street Journal reports.

He wrote about meeting one of the characters in the afterlife an hour before going on his killing spree at his former workplace in Indianapolis, US, on Thursday.

The cultish "brony" group, a portmanteau of "bro" and "pony", consists mostly of adult men who are fans of the animated television show.

Some are sexually attracted to the characters, who are female horses, and some members of the group have been linked with far-right ideology.

Hole, 19, reportedly wrote: "I hope that I can be with Ap­ple­jack in the af­ter­life, my life has no mean­ing with­out her" in a now-deleted post at 10.19pm on Thursday.

The post included a photo of Applejack, a blonde pony who is a main character on the show.

The Wall Street Journal cited an internal Facebook memo they had seen that detailed Hole's post.

“Brony on­line cul­ture has dis­played el­e­ments of far-right and white na­tion­al­ist ex­trem­ism,” the memo stated.

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  FedEx shooting: 'Eight dead and 60 injured' inside warehouse before gunman kills himself

Facebook stopped short of saying Hole’s pony-love had anything to do with the shooting, writing in the memo there was no clear evidence it motivated the massacre.

Hole, a former employee of FedEx, opened fire in the facility before turning the gun on himself. His motives remain unclear.

Eight people were killed in the massacre, police said.

Five were taken to local hospitals and two others were treated at the scene and released.

Of the deceased, four were found in the parking lot and four inside the facility.

Fred Smith, the founder and chief executive of FedEx, confirmed on Friday that the eight killed were workers at the Indianapolis Ground facility.

In a message to employees, he said it would take some time to understand what happened in “this senseless act of violence.”

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