You knew it was coming. The fighting in Lebanon had to spill over here eventually, and despite the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) protests of stereotyping I think everyone knew it would be a Muslim who drew first blood. Amazingly despite all the excitement downtown my commute was pretty mild.

So here’s what I as a Seattle area resident know:

At 4:03 pm today a man walked into the Jewish Federation of Seattle, an organization whose mission is “ to ensure Jewish survival and to enhance the quality of Jewish life locally, in Israel and worldwide.” and shot 6 people, 1 fatally.

Police arrived soon thereafter and the man apparently surrended peacefully and told them he was a Muslim angry at Israel for the fighting in Lebanon.

Stuff I heard but haven’t seen confirmed:

1. The man was of Pakistani descent. Update: 7:55:00pm - Confirmed. 31 years old current citizenship status unknown.
2. There were early concerns of an explosive device. Update: No explosives found
3. There were concerns about additional shooters.

At the moment the police are saying this is not a terrorism or terrorist case, although I think it is similar enough to the 2001 El-Al shootings in Los Angeles that that judgement may be mistaken.

I’m not one to let this kind of stuff drive my life, but I live in the same city where that idiot National Guardsman tried to sell secrets to Al-Qaeda so coupled with this, and Zawahiri’s latest “Kill two Americans get a bonus virgin” tape I think I will stay out of the malls for awhile.

News:

Seattle PI
Seattle Times
KOMO TV

I will update if anything important comes up.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 28th, 2006 at 6:05 pm by Chad and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.