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Suspect's (Padilla's) years in South Florida were troubled
The Miami Herald ^ | 6/11/02 | WANDA J. DeMARZO, BETH REINHARD AND MARTIN MERZER

Posted on 06/11/2002 6:29:01 AM PDT by browardchad

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1 posted on 06/11/2002 6:29:01 AM PDT by browardchad
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To: browardchad
"He started to go for his gun when I went to arrest him," said Sunrise police Lt. Charles Vital..."

Then you should have done your job and ensured that he wouldn't be around to bother us today.

2 posted on 06/11/2002 6:31:19 AM PDT by BlueLancer
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To: browardchad
I was going to post on one of these Padilla threads that the "root causes" liberal stories were going to be sprouting out everywhere.
3 posted on 06/11/2002 6:43:52 AM PDT by Semper Paratus
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To: browardchad
Gee, I'm sure glad he converted to the Religion of Peace and not some other religion.:^0
4 posted on 06/11/2002 7:10:49 AM PDT by Kermit
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To: browardchad
The American gang kid who now calls himself Abdullah al Muhajir, accused of plotting radioactive terrorism against his country, lived in South Florida from 1990 to 1998. He landed in the Broward County Jail. He converted to Islam here.
Probably with the help of one of Ramsey Clark's prison outreach charities.
5 posted on 06/11/2002 7:19:45 AM PDT by Dales
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To: BlueLancer
Then you should have done your job and ensured that he wouldn't be around to bother us today.

An AP story in the Herald reveals that Padilla "served one year's probation on state weapons and assault charges in Sunrise, Fla."

So, after shooting at another motorist, making a move to pull his gun on the arresting officer, and assaulting a prison guard, the guy got probation in the end.

This country's justice system is a Humpty-Dumpty mess.

6 posted on 06/11/2002 7:35:32 AM PDT by browardchad
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To: browardchad
Another product of the dump that is the Sunrise/Tamarac/Coral Springs liberal Dem corridor. Of course, he spent time in New York before he came down here...
7 posted on 06/11/2002 7:42:36 AM PDT by Clemenza
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To: browardchad
Note the PC language of the headline. Padilla's years in Miami "were troubled."

Correct headline should read: "Padilla has history of violent criminal behavior"

8 posted on 06/11/2002 7:47:20 AM PDT by governsleastgovernsbest
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To: browardchad
No mention of what Padilla was doing in '95, when the OKC bombing occurred.
9 posted on 06/11/2002 7:51:50 AM PDT by aristeides
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To: BlueLancer
Gee, did you ever think that IF they shot and killed him, they wouldn't be able to milk him for information? Nah, just shoot first, then ask questions, but sometimes it is difficult to get the answers!
10 posted on 06/11/2002 8:02:21 AM PDT by morjon
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To: aristeides
No mention of what Padilla was doing in '95, when the OKC bombing occurred.

Funny you should mention that -- someone e-mailed the Fox morning show, pointing out the likeness of Padilla to the OKC Middle-Eastern man police drawing put out right after the bombing.

Steve Doocey made the comment that Padilla was "way to young back then." Not true, of course, since Padilla was born in 1970.

11 posted on 06/11/2002 8:07:10 AM PDT by browardchad
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To: The Magical Mischief Tour
FYI.
12 posted on 06/11/2002 8:14:31 AM PDT by aristeides
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To: morjon
Yeah, but this was in '91 ... even before he went to jail and became a Moslem terrorist.

So there weren't any questions to ask of him at the time, except "Are you feelin' lucky?"

13 posted on 06/11/2002 8:20:35 AM PDT by BlueLancer
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To: browardchad
My instant thought when it was noted that he was Puerto Rican was that he might have some connection to the FALN. It may be a long shot but most world terrorists are connected in some fashion. Of course, the reason I thought of this is because it would shake up a certain junior senator...
14 posted on 06/11/2002 8:24:42 AM PDT by miss marmelstein
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To: Clemenza;governsleastgovernsbest;aristeides;Semper Paratus;Blue Lancer
Here's the extremely-left South Florida Sun Sentinel version of the story, with some interesting info:

'Dirty bomb' suspect has criminal past in Broward from early '90s
By Christy McKerney
Sun-Sentinel

SUNRISE · Sunrise police Lt. Charlie Vitale recognized the name instantly, even a decade later.

José Padilla lived in Lauderhill when Vitale arrested him after a road-rage shooting incident in 1991. Vitale was a brand new detective, on the job for only two years.

"I almost shot him because he went for his gun," Vitale said.

Padilla is in a lot more trouble now.

Prosecutors announced Monday that Padilla, now Abdullah al-Mujahir after converting to Islam in the early 1990s, is part of an al-Qaida terrorist network that plotted to unleash a radioactive bomb in the U.S.

Padilla told government interrogators after his arrest on May 8 in Chicago that he turned to Islam while incarcerated in the Broward County Jail and ultimately took his Islamic name.

FBI agents showed up at the Sunrise Police Department about a month ago, looking for his fingerprint cards and paperwork, Vitale said.

Like some of the terrorists who flew airplanes into U.S. buildings on Sept. 11, Padilla had ties to South Florida, living here from 1990 to at least 1997. Religious leaders at several local mosques said they did not recognize his name or his photograph.

At the Lake Park Gardens condominium complex in Plantation, there was a plaque quoting scripture on a door to the home of Padilla's mother, Estela Ortega: "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." There was also a statue of a cherub reclining, two bows decorated with American flag patterns, and a handwritten note: "Please leave this family in peace."

Victor Olds, Ortega's lawyer, said Monday's announcement regarding the so-called "dirty bomb" plot "caught her off guard" and that before Padilla's arrest at O'Hare, where he arrived from Pakistan, via Zurich, holding $10,000 in cash, his mother thought he was coming home to visit his family.

"She said to me that she never had any information that would have led her to believe that her son was involved in a terrorist group," Olds said. "She knows that he was in the Middle East for a while, but there is nothing else she knows."

When José was 4, his mother, Estela Ortega, moved him to West Chicago from Brooklyn. In West Chicago they lived in a modest rowhouse they shared with two other families; his father apparently died when he was young. Neighbors recalled that his nickname was "Pucho," or pudgy, and that he played softball in the streets.

But law enforcement sources say he ended up pursuing less benign activities. He joined the Latin Kings, a street gang that used to promote itself as a nonviolent source of empowerment for young Latinos before dozens of its leaders were sent to jail. The sources also say he was involved in a gangland murder when he was only 13.

On the night of Aug. 15, 1985, just shy of his 15th birthday, Padilla and five others attacked and robbed three men on a Chicago street, court records said. One victim was fatally stabbed, and Padilla kicked him in the head.

Because he was a juvenile, records are not available on what charge Padilla faced, or the outcome of the case.

In 1991, he moved to Florida, where he was living with a girlfriend and working at hotels for $200 a week -- according to a successful worker's compensation claim that netted him an additional $5 a week -- and driving a car with tinted windows.

On Oct. 8, 1991, Padilla was driving a black Toyota Tercel when he flashed a handgun at two men in another car during a traffic incident. Both cars stopped at a gas station at Oakland Park Boulevard and University Drive, where Padilla pulled out the gun, fired it at their windshield and missed, according to the police report. No one was injured.

"He was a 20-year-old," Vitale said. "He just got angry and he popped off a round."

Staking out the house where Padilla lived with his girlfriend at 2315 NW 55th Terrace in Lauderhill eight hours after the road rage incident, Vitale didn't know about Padilla's extensive arrest record -- a record that included his involvement in a murder and robbery as a juvenile.

Padilla was walking up to the house when Vitale and his partner yelled for him to get on the ground. He started backing up and reached into his waistband for the gun before officers subdued him.

"There are only a couple of times that I could look back and know for sure that something was very close, and that was one of them," Vitale said.

Padilla was charged with aggravated assault, firing a firearm from a vehicle and carrying a concealed weapon in 1991 and spent 303 days in the Broward County Jail.

He told police at the time of his arrest that he had worked for two weeks at the Holiday Inn on University Drive in Plantation, setting up banquet rooms.

While in jail, Padilla received additional charges of battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting without violence after pushing a correctional officer. He also underwent substance abuse treatment.

After his release from jail in 1992, Padilla continued to get in occasional scrapes with the law until he left Florida in 1998 for overseas, authorities said. He is believed to have lived and traveled in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East, officials said.

He was on probation from Aug. 5, 1992, to Aug. 4, 1993, in Broward County, according to Sterling Ivey, spokesman for the Florida Department of Corrections.

Padilla, now 31 or 32, was born in Brooklyn. Padilla received his Florida driver's license in August 1993, but picked up a number of traffic citations, beginning with a bicycle violation in 1990 and concluding with a speeding citation in 1997 that led to indefinite suspension of his license. During at least one traffic stop, court documents show, he used the name José Alicea.

Padilla already had an extensive record when he got to South Florida.

On Feb. 16, 1989, Padilla, then 18, was arrested under the alias José Rivera. Police in the gangs unit charged him with punching a man in the face when the man tried to stop Padilla from stealing a doughnut at a Chicago restaurant. Padilla also resisted arrest.

Originally charged with attempted theft, resisting arrest and battery, he was found guilty only of resisting, and sentenced to a year's probation. Police obtained an arrest warrant after he failed to report to his probation officer. At the time, Padilla was a $420 a month hotel dishwasher.

It is unclear whether the warrant was ever served for the probation violation. Padilla may have come to Florida by then.

Padilla lived at a number of locations around South Florida, including the Sundown Apartments in Lauderhill where residents at a yellow and brown garden apartment complex at 5801 NW 17th Place had never heard of him.

Less than a mile from Lauderhill City Hall, Joey Gilmore, a 57-year-old musician, spent the afternoon fielding questions from reporters on the stoop of his apartment at 2315 NW 55th Way in Lauderhill in the Lofts of Atria.

Gilmore, who has rented the apartment for four years, was watching Matlock, on television on Monday when he learned of Padilla during a brief news flash.

Minutes later, news reporters knocked on his door and informed him of Muhajur's link to his two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in the single-story, wood-shingled row house.

"It's weird,'' Gilmore said. "This is the first time I have ever heard of him.''

Back in Chicago, where Padilla grew up, Nelly Ojeda, a former neighbor who lives in the three-story flat where Padilla grew up, was surprised by the news of his arrest.

Ojeda said Padilla's family had lived in Puerto Rico before moving to Chicago.

"He was so quiet, so nice," Ojeda said. "He doesn't look like a person who would do something like that. It would surprise me if he did it."

Wire reports and Staff Writers Robert Nolin, Sallie James, Jeremy Milarsky and Susannah Bryan contributed to this report. Christy McKerney can be reached at cmckerney@sun-sentinel.com or 954-572-2008.

_________________________________________

No specific info relating to where he was in 1995.

15 posted on 06/11/2002 8:30:37 AM PDT by browardchad
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To: browardchad
Yep. A quintessential bad seed.

I've been to that station at University and Oakland Park where he had his altercation.

16 posted on 06/11/2002 8:36:14 AM PDT by Clemenza
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To: browardchad; John H K; The Magical Mischief Tour; okcsubmariner; wallaby
Thanks.

John H K, note that this guy was released from prison in '92, and his probation ended in '93. In '95, he was free as air, and we still don't know what he was doing at that time.

17 posted on 06/11/2002 8:37:24 AM PDT by aristeides
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To: governsleastgovernsbest
Note the PC language of the headline. Padilla's years in Miami "were troubled."

Uh, he wasn't in Miami, he was in Broward County. Please don't associate this a--hole with us Miami-Dade Residents, we have enough trouble as it is with Janet Reno, OJ Simpson, Hugh Rodham, etc...

18 posted on 06/11/2002 8:38:33 AM PDT by Clemenza
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To: Clemenza
Sorry about that, no offense to Miami intended. I need to read more carefully, was just focusing on fact article was from Miami Herald.
19 posted on 06/11/2002 8:42:25 AM PDT by governsleastgovernsbest
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To: Clemenza
he was in Broward County

OK, Miami is absolved, and Broward is a cesspool. (What else is new?);-)

Note that he spent most of his time in Plantation, where there is a mosque that was prominently featured by the Sun-Sentinel in their "poor Muslims" and "Muslim outreach" stories after 9/11.

20 posted on 06/11/2002 8:45:17 AM PDT by browardchad
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