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Home Front: WoT

Day 4: 'Radicalized' Pensacola gunman visited 9/11 memorial in New York 2 days before shooting up Navy classroom as it's revealed he had ‘been thinking about this for a long time’

2019-12-09

See today also here and here, here, here, and here. And finally here.

[Daily Mail, where America gets its news]

Saudi Royal Air Force Second Lt. Mohammed Saeed al-Shamrani killed three and wounded eight others at Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, on Friday

He carried out the shooting with a 9mm Glock 45 semiautomatic pistol with an extended magazine, according to law enforcement officials

Investigators say al-Shamrani obtained the gun legally after buying it from a Pensacola gun shop

Although federal law doesn't allow foreign nationals to purchase a gun, al-Shamrani took advantage of a loophole by obtaining a Florida hunting license

It took al-Shamrani about 15 weeks to obtain the handgun legally, leading investigators to believe he was driven to carry out the shooting

In April he also lodged a complaint against one of his instructors at the training center who called him ‘porn stash’ in front of other aviation students

Investigators also questioned at least five other Saudi airmen who were with al-Shamrani during his four-day trip to New York City just days before shooting

Sources said al-Shamrani and the Saudis traveled to New York on November 28, where they saw the 9/11 memorial, the Statue of Liberty, and Central Park

Law enforcement officials said that the group of Saudis did not notice any unusual behavior by al-Shamrani during the trip to New York

After the shooting, a number of the Saudi airmen took cell phone video near the scene. But investigators say they were merely doing what any other curious onlooker would do when seeing a large number of emergency vehicles descend on the area. Investigators combed through the cell phone footage and found nothing unusual that would arouse their suspicions, according to The Daily Beast.

‘Nothing before the fact, nothing during,’ one law enforcement official said

The Jerusalem Post adds:

Rachel Rojas, special agent in charge of the FBI's Jacksonville office and lead investigator on the case, said the FBI was working, as it does in most mass shootings, on the presumption that it was an act of terrorism, but she stressed that was largely to allow investigators to use special tools afforded to them in terrorism cases.

"We are looking very hard at uncovering his motive and I would ask for patience so we can get this right," she said, adding that 80 FBI special agents, 100 support staff and scores of other investigators from the Navy and multiple federal agencies were working the case.

Rojas said the pistol he used - a Glock 9mm handgun that can be paired with a magazine holding 33 rounds - was legally purchased by the shooter somewhere in Florida. According to U.S. regulations, it is legal for a foreigner in the United States on a nonimmigrant visa to buy a gun if certain conditions are met - including if they simply have a hunting license.

Alshamrani was on the base as part of a U.S. Navy training program designed to foster links with foreign allies.

His fellow Saudi students were speaking directly to American investigators and were restricted to the base on order of the Saudi military, Rojas said.

And from Reuters:

Investigators have found no sign Alshamrani had links to international terrorist groups and think he may have radicalized on his own, the New York Times reported, citing an unidentified U.S. official. It said the airman first entered the United States in 2018, returned to Saudi Arabia, then re-entered the United States in February, and had reported for training at the base about three days before the attack.

At least three of the eight people wounded were law enforcement officers shot as they responded to the attack, officials said, including one Navy police officer and two county sheriff's deputies. They were expected to recover.

Posted by:trailing wife

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