CNN
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The 21-year-old Massachusetts man arrested by the FBI on Thursday in connection with the leaking of a trove of classified US government documents had a fascination with the military, guns and war, several former high school classmates told CNN.

Jack Teixeira was arrested in Massachusetts without incident, Attorney General Merrick Garland said, and he made his initial appearance in US District Court in Boston on Friday morning.

Teixeira would sometimes wear camouflage to school, carried a “dictionary-sized book on guns” and behaved in a way that made some students uneasy, former classmates said.

“A lot of people were wary of him,” said Brooke Cleathero, who attended middle school and high school with Teixeira. “He was more of a loner, and having a fascination with war and guns made him off-putting to a lot of people.”

John Powell, who also attended middle school and high school with Teixeira, said he recalled him as a pleasant and quiet kid who was sometimes picked on. “He didn’t have many friends,” Powell said.

Teixeira grew up in the suburbs of Providence, Rhode Island, according to public records. He attended Dighton-Rehoboth High School in Massachusetts where he graduated in 2020, according to the superintendent of the regional school district.

Powell recalled Teixeira occasionally toting around a textbook on military vehicles – tanks, planes and submarines – and having a fascination with anything “military-related” from an early age.

“He was dead set on joining some branch of the military, even as a kid,” Powell said.

Other students, who asked not to be identified, said they detected a more menacing vibe from Texeira, who some recalled making comments they perceived as racist or mumbling derogatory things about people under his breath.

One student recalled him showing up for school wearing a shirt with an AR-15 on it the day after the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017.

Teixeira didn’t behave in a manner that rose to the level where “people felt the need to report him,” another former classmate said, but “he made me nervous.”

The same student said she took his fascination with the military as a form of American nationalism and was therefore surprised by the allegations against him.

“I didn’t think he would be capable of doing something like this,” she said.