Posted on 10/25/2002 9:53:46 PM PDT by per loin
Friday, October 25, 2002
ATF Officials Warned About Muhammad Last Summer
| Sniper Suspect Arrests | ||
 • Western WA Links • Photos from the case |
ASSOCIATED PRESS and
KIRO 7 EYEWITNESS NEWS
BELLINGHAM -- FBI officials in Washington state referred John Allen Muhammad to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for possible investigation in July after interviewing a witness who claimed the former soldier was trying to obtain a silencer for his gun and spoke of killing police officers, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.
Police said emphatically that nothing they received that day from the witness suggested Muhammad and a 17-year-old companion, John Lee Malvo, would commit a series of killings in the suburbs around the nation's capital, as they are now suspected of doing.
A Bellingham man, Harjee Singh, said he met with authorities last summer and told them Muhammad and Malvo -- whom he'd met at the local YMCA -- had talked to him about a possible plan to shoot police officers.
"I raised the red flag three months ago," Singh said. "I told them what their intention was."
Asked to elaborate, Singh said, "They told me they were likely to do a sniper attack. They told me they were going to shoot to kill."
Asked by the AP if they named targets, Singh said, "Yeah, cops."
He said the pair also mentioned possibly shooting a tanker truck.
Bellingham police Chief Randy Carroll said Thursday that his agency had met with Singh last summer, but he would not discuss the nature of what Singh said at that meeting -- except that it involved Muhammad and Malvo. Police met again with Singh Wednesday night, Carroll said.
"There was nothing he told us three months ago or last night that would lead us to believe Mr. Muhammad or Mr. Malvo would have the kind of future that led them to where they are today," Carroll said.
One law enforcement official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said that while the FBI had doubts about the credibility of some parts of Singh's story, it made the referral to ATF, which enforces the nation's gun laws, and also encouraged local law enforcement to consider the threat against police officers.
"We looked at this as an officer safety issue," the source said. The official said he did not know what ATF and local police did after the referrals.
At Washington State Patrol headquarters in Tumwater, spokesman Lt. Mark Couey said there was no record of a warning issued by that office.
In Seattle, FBI spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs declined comment.
Bellingham is proving to be an important location in the investigation of the sniper shootings. In fact, a routine fingerprinting procedure on an immigration call here may have been crucial to unlocking the sniper case.
Malvo's fingerprint was discovered at the scene of a deadly shooting at an Alabama liquor store, which allowed police in the sniper case to put names and faces to the shootings that had terrorized the Washington, D.C., region for three weeks.
Muhammad and Malvo lived at a homeless shelter here in late 2001, telling people they were father and son.
They were followed by Una James, Malvo's mother. The Seattle Times reported that she asked Bellingham police to help her get her son back from Muhammad, who she felt was exerting too much control over the boy.
But police discovered that James and Malvo were in the U.S. illegally, and referred the case to the Border Patrol.
Federal Immigration and Naturalization Service records in Seattle show that James and Malvo were arrested and held for three and a half weeks in late December and early January -- James in Seattle and Malvo in a juvenile facility in Spokane -- after border officers in Bellingham notified INS that they were here illegally. Malvo was fingerprinted while in INS custody.
James and Malvo had paid for passage from Jamaica to Haiti in the cargo hold of a ship, according to INS documents. From Haiti they were smuggled into Florida on a tug boat, INS records show.
Because of the less serious charges against them -- illegal entry without inspection -- INS says it was not required to immediately deport them.
James posted $1,500 bond, and a Nov. 20 hearing was scheduled for her in Seattle. INS officers released Malvo to his mother's custody.
But Malvo soon returned to Muhammad, and James reportedly left Bellingham soon after without her son.
Malvo and Muhammad reunited in Bellingham. Only sketchy information is known about their movements between last winter and their arrest at a Maryland rest stop on Thursday.
They visited Muhammad's relatives in Louisiana in July. In summer, they also spent time in Tacoma, about 120 miles south of Bellingham, where neighbors reported hearing high-powered rifle shots from the backyard of the house where they stayed. Federal agents searched the backyard and hauled away evidence on Wednesday, shortly before Malvo and Muhammad were named by police as persons of interest in the case.
How Muhammad came to possess the weapon that was found in his car is another mystery. His second wife had obtained a restraining order against him in Washington state, which should have blocked him from buying the Bushmaster XM-15 assault rifle.
The weapon that has allowed authorities to hold him since his arrest was not the rifle identified as the murder weapon.
What tripped him up, according to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, was his possession of a slightly different Bushmaster XM-15 rifle in May 2000. That was after his second wife had obtained a restraining order against him, telling the court she feared for her life.
Because the court granted the restraining order, it was illegal for him to possess a firearm.
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Huh?
A typical target in the terrorist repetoire. I'm not an expert but I'd think a "serial killer" obsesses about one kind of victim or act. Not a variety of types of attacks, which, just "by coincidence", are terroristic.
the infowarrior
"There was nothing he told us three months ago or last night that would lead us to believe Mr. Muhammad or Mr. Malvo would have the kind of future that led them to where they are today," Carroll said.
Well, blame the tipster! He should have been more informative.
It looks like the bullets pulled from the stump were not all from the rifle found in the car and tied to the shootings, or maybe none of them were. In any event they were evidence that he possessed a gun while under a domestic violence restraining order, which was enough to hold him on until the tests could show that the one found in the vehicle was the one used in the shootings and thus lead to murder charges.
Only if you thing criminals and terrorists will obey the law. I don't think they have the domestic violence restraining orders in the NICS database, so he wouldn't have gotten a "hit" when he went to buy the gun...assuming he bought it from a dealer at all. Just as likely he bought it from the trunk of a car, which is the more usual way for a criminal to get a gun.
Or liazing with their informants about how to cut a shotgun barrell to 17 3/4 inches or (and even "better" trick) cutting the stock on a break action (single or double) down enough that the overall lenght is 1/4 " less than the minimum allowed before the tax is due.
Nevertheless, of course, the Lieberals simply howl for more gun control.
We need to hammer this point home in every hearing on these atrocities in which we can make our voices heard. Quit trying to grab all of our guns and blame us for these incidents, and make law enforcement do their job!
The Lieberals are always trying to justify their depradations of our rights by piously intoning that they are merely "Searching For Ways to Prevent These Horrific Crimes", having of course already made up their tiny minds w/r/t the "Solution" they want.
Here we have the *correct* solution - MAKE LAW ENFORCEMENT ACCOUNTABLE when they DON'T ACT on tips like this!
It was early in the morning of Friday, Oct. 4. Muhammad and Malvo started their Muslim good-will tour on Oct. 2 in Montgomery County. For warm-ups, though, they killed a woman in Alabama on Sept. 21 -- and there was a Sept. 14 shooting in Montgomery County (also an employee of a liquor store) that fits the MO, but there weren't sufficient fragments to make a match (according to ATF, anyhow).
I have a strong suspicion that the spree started on 9/11/02, but either those attempts weren't successful, or no one's made the connection yet.
I also have a question that been kicking around in my head. If the INS goes to the trouble of fingerprinting illegal aliens (before they don't deport them), what the heck do they do with the fingerprints? Alabama LE had a fingerprint in September, but didn't have a match until the sniper actually bragged about the shooting to the task force -- more proof that our alphabet agencies don't share info with local LE, or with each other, for that matter.
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