Tag Archives: Shooting

Families of San Bernardino shooting sue Facebook, Google, Twitter

FILE PHOTO: Weapons confiscated from the attack in San Bernardino, California are shown in this San Bernardino County Sheriff Department handout photo from their Twitter account released to Reuters December 3, 2015. REUTERS/San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department/Handout/File Photo

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Family members of three victims of the December 2015 shooting rampage in San Bernardino, California, have sued Facebook, Google and Twitter, claiming that the companies permitted Islamic State to flourish on social media.

The relatives assert that by allowing Islamic State militants to spread propaganda freely on social media, the three companies provided “material support” to the group and enabled attacks such as the one in San Bernardino.

“For years defendants have knowingly and recklessly provided the terrorist group ISIS with accounts to use its social networks as a tool for spreading extremist propaganda, raising funds and attracting new recruits,” family members of Sierra Clayborn, Tin Nguyen and Nicholas Thalasinos charge in the 32-page complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

“Without defendants Twitter, Facebook and Google (YouTube), the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible,” the complaint said.

Spokeswomen for Twitter and Google declined to comment on the lawsuit. Representatives for Facebook could not immediately be reached by Reuters on Thursday afternoon.

Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on a holiday gathering of Farook’s co-workers at a government building in San Bernardino on Dec. 2, 2015, killing 14 people and wounding 22 others.

Farook, the 28-year-old, U.S.-born son of Pakistani immigrants, and Malik, 29, a Pakistani native, died in a shootout with police four hours after the massacre.

Authorities have said the couple was inspired by Islamist militants. At the time, the assault ranked as the deadliest attack by Islamist extremists on U.S. soil since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In June 2016, an American-born gunman pledging allegiance to the leader of Islamic State shot 49 people to death at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, before he was killed by police.

In December 2016 the families of three men killed at the nightclub sued Twitter, Google and Facebook in federal court on allegations similar to those in the California lawsuit.

Federal law gives internet companies broad immunity from liability for content posted by their users. A number of lawsuits have been filed in recent years seeking to hold social media companies responsible for terror attacks, but none has advanced beyond the preliminary phases.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by David Ingram and Julia Love in San Francisco; Editing by Dan Grebler and Grant McCool)

Two dead, including suspect in Dallas-area college shooting -police

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – A gunman on Wednesday shot and killed a woman on a college campus in the Dallas area, before committing suicide, police said, two days after a deadly stabbing at another college in Texas.

Adrian Victor Torres, 21, shot and killed Janeera Nickol Gonzalez, 20, in a common study area at North Lake College in Irving, before taking his own life in a locker room shower in a nearby building, the Irving Police Department said.

“It is unclear at this time if there was a prior connection between the victim and suspect,” it said in a statement.

Local news showed video footage of students running out of school buildings, located about 10 miles (16 km) west of downtown Dallas, at about 11:30 a.m., as police swarmed the campus.

Gonzalez’s mother Lucia told an ABC affiliate that Torres “had been stalking her for quite a while but she didn’t make anything of it.”

The family told the WFAA that the two never dated and were not friends. Gonzalez was studying kinesiology and planned to graduate in a few weeks.

“There is no justice for my daughter,” Gonzalez said.

College officials announced the school would be closed for the rest of the week.

On Monday, a man enrolled at the University of Texas went on a stabbing spree with a large hunting knife at the school’s Austin campus about 200 miles (320 km) south of Irving, killing one student and wounding three, police said.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; , Additional reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Clarence Fernandez)

Accused gunman in Fresno shooting spree charged in motel murder

A road is blocked by police tape after a multiple victim shooting incident in downtown Fresno, California, U.S. April 18, 2017. Fresno County Sheriff/Handout via REUTERS

By Dan Whitcomb

(Reuters) – A suspect nicknamed Black Jesus who police say killed three white men during a racially motivated shooting spree in downtown Fresno, California, was charged on Thursday with the murder of an unarmed Motel 6 security guard days earlier.

Kori Ali Muhammad, 39, was also charged by Fresno County prosecutors with the attempted murder of a second security guard at the motel on April 13, five days before the shooting rampage.

A spokeswoman for the Fresno County District Attorney’s Office said Muhammad would be charged in connection with the fatal gun spree after police investigators submit final reports in the case.

Police have said Muhammad was bent on killing as many white men as possible when he gunned down the three men in downtown Fresno and fired at another, who was missed by the bullets.

Although Muhammad shouted: “Allu Akhbar” as he was taken into custody, Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer has said the case did not appear to be an act of terrorism.

“Kori Muhammad is not a terrorist, but he is a racist, and he is filled with hate, and he set out this week to kill as many people as he could,” Dyer told reporters on Wednesday.

Dyer said at the news conference that Muhammad, who went by the nickname Black Jesus, opened fire in the parking lot of a Fresno-area Motel 6 because he felt disrespected after being asked to move out. Security guard Carl Williams was slain.

On Tuesday morning, he logged onto the internet at a Starbucks coffee shop and learned that police had identified him as the assailant in that crime.

“What he told our detectives last night was that once he saw he was wanted for murder, he was not going to go down for shooting a security guard for disrespecting him, but that he was going to kill as many white males as possible,” Dyer said.

Police say Muhammad opened fire 17 times at about 10:45 a.m. on Tuesday as he walked and ran along several blocks in Fresno, killing the three men in less than four minutes.

Fresno is an agricultural hub in California’s central valley, about 170 miles (275 km) southeast of San Francisco.

Muhammad faces a maximum of life in prison if convicted of the two charges filed against him on Thursday. He was expected to make an initial court appearance as early as Friday morning.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Gunman attacks regional Russian security service office, kills two: FSB

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s Federal Security Service said on Friday that a gunman had burst into one of its regional offices in the far east of the country and opened fire, killing one of its employees and a visitor.

The incident happened at an FSB office in the Khabarovsk region, which is close to China, and another visitor was injured in the attack. The FSB, the successor organization to the Soviet KGB, said the attacker had been killed.

“An unknown person entered the reception of the FSB’s Khabarovsk regional branch and started shooting at people inside,” the FSB said in a statement.

The FSB said the gunman was a local resident, born in 1999, who belonged to an unnamed nationalist group, the TASS news agency reported, citing an FSB official.

The visitor who was killed and the one who was injured were from former Soviet states outside Russia, according to the security service.

Russia was this month shaken by a suicide bombing of the St Petersburg metro, which killed 16 people. The suspected suicide bomber and his alleged accomplices were from Central Asia, something rights group feared might provoke a backlash.

(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Paris gunman’s criminal past in focus as police hunt second suspect

French CRS police patrol the Champs Elysees Avenue the day after a policeman was killed and two others were wounded in a shooting incident in Paris, France, April 21, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

By Emmanuel Jarry and John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) – The man who shot dead a French policeman in an Islamist militant attack had served time for armed assaults on law enforcement officers, police sources said on Friday, as authorities sought a second suspect flagged by Belgian security services.

The gunman, identified as Karim Cheurfi, opened fire on a police vehicle parked on the Champs Elysees in Paris late on Thursday, killing one officer and injuring two others before being shot dead.

The attack overshadowed the last day of campaigning for Sunday’s presidential election first round, bringing raw issues surrounding Islamist militancy to the fore.

Cheurfi, a French national who lived in the eastern Paris suburb of Chelles, had been convicted for previous armed assaults on law enforcement officers going back 16 years, the sources said, and was well known to authorities.

In addition to the assault rifle used in the attack, he had a pump action shotgun and knives in his car, the sources said. Three of his family members have been placed in detention, the French interior ministry announced on Friday.

While in detention, Cheurfi had also shot and wounded a prison officer after seizing his gun. Eventually freed after serving most of his sentence, he was arrested again this year on suspicion of preparing an attack on police – but released for lack of evidence.

A French interior ministry spokesman confirmed on Friday that a manhunt was underway for a second individual, based on information from Belgian security services.

“It’s too early to say how or whether he was connected to what happened on the Champs Elysees,” ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said. “There are a certain number of leads to check. We are not ruling anything out.”

A potential second suspect was identified as Youssouf El Osri in a document seen by Reuters. Belgian security officials had warned French counterparts before the attack that El Osri was a “very dangerous individual en route to France” aboard the Thalys high-speed train.

The warning was circulated more widely among French security services in the hour following the Champs Elysees attack.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Champs Elysees shooting hours after the attack, in a statement identifying the attacker as “Abu Yousif the Belgian.”

El Osri’s connection with either Cheurfi or the man named in Islamic State’s statement remained unclear on Friday.

Coming just days after police said they had foiled another planned Islamist attack, arresting two men in the southern city of Marseille, the Champs Elysees shooting dominated the final day of election campaigning.

Conservative candidate Francois Fillon and Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, both talked up their tough law-and-order stances while centrist front-runner Emmanuel Macron stressed he was also up to the challenge.

(Additional reporting by John Irish, Gerard Bon and Yves Clarisse; Writing by Laurence Frost; Editing by Andrew Callus)

One police officer killed, two wounded in Paris shooting

Police secure the Champs Elysee Avenue after one policeman was killed and another wounded in a shooting incident in Paris, France, April 20, 2017. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann

By Julien Pretot

PARIS (Reuters) – One policeman was killed and two others wounded in a shooting incident in central Paris on Thursday night, police and the interior ministry said.

The shooting, in which the assailant was also killed, took place on the Champs-Elysees shopping boulevard just days ahead of France’s presidential election.

A witness told Reuters that a man got out of a car at the scene and began shooting with a machine gun. A police source also said more shots had been fired at another location near the scene.

A French interior ministry spokesman said it was too early to say what the motive of the attack was, but that it was clear the police officers had been deliberately targeted.

The French prosecutors’ office said the counter-terrorism office had opened an inquiry.

Three police sources said, however, that the shooting could have been an attempt at an armed robbery.

“I came out of the Sephora shop and I was walking along the pavement where an Audi 80 was parked. A man got out and opened fire with a kalashnikov on a policeman,” witness Chelloug, a kitchen assistant, told Reuters.

“The policeman fell down. I heard six shots, I was afraid. I have a two year-old girl and I thought I was going to die… He shot straight at the police officer.”

Police authorities called on the public to avoid the area.

TV footage showed the Arc de Triomphe monument and top half of the Champs Elysees packed with police vans, lights flashing and heavily armed police shutting the area down after what was described by one journalist as a major exchange of fire near a Marks and Spencers store.

The incident came as French voters prepared go to the polls on Sunday in the most tightly-contested presidential election in living memory.

France has lived under a state of emergency since 2015 and has suffered a spate of Islamist militant attacks that have killed more than 230 people in the past two years.

Earlier this week, two men were arrested in Marseille whom police said had been planning an attack ahead of the election.

A machine gun, two hand guns and three kilos of TATP explosive were among the weapons found at a flat in the southern city along with jihadist propaganda materials according to the Paris prosecutor.

(Reporting by Richard Balmforth; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Leigh Thomas and Andrew Callus)

Gunmen kill policeman in attack near Egypt’s St. Catherine’s Monastery

FILE PHOTO - Men walk inside Saint Catherine's monastery, in the Sinai Peninsula, south of Egypt, December 8, 2015. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh/File Photo

By Ali Abdelaty

CAIRO (Reuters) – Gunmen attacked security forces near St. Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt’s south Sinai on Tuesday, killing at least one police officer and injuring four others, the Health Ministry said, just a week after two deadly church bombings killed 45.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack on a police checkpoint about 800 meters (yards) from the entrance to the monastery, one of the world’s most important Christian sites.

The attack comes just 10 days before Pope Francis is scheduled to visit Egypt and just over a week after two deadly suicide bombings on Christian churches, also claimed by Islamic State, plunged the country into mourning and marked one of the bloodiest days for the country’s Christian minority in decades.

St. Catherine’s, founded in the 6th century and located at the foot of Mount Sinai, is one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the world and a UNESCO world heritage site. It is part of the Eastern Orthodox church.

Egypt’s Christian minority, which makes up about 10 percent of the country’s 92 million people, has increasingly been targeted by Islamist militants, with three deadly church attacks in the span of four months.

In February, scores of Christian families and students fled North Sinai province after a spate of targeted killings.

A successful assault on St. Catherine’s would be the latest challenge to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has pledged to protect the religious minority as part of his campaign against extremism.

Egypt has for years been battling an Islamist insurgency in the rugged and thinly populated northern Sinai, which gained pace after the military overthrew President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 following mass protests against his rule.

Attacks in Egypt’s southern Sinai, a popular destination for tourists dotted with Red Sea resorts, are by contrast rare.

Security sources told Reuters that security had been put on high alert at tourist facilities across southern Sinai after the attack.

The attack in southern Sinai comes as Russia is expected to make a long-awaited decision on whether to restore flights to the Sharm el-Sheikh resort after a Russian airliner was downed in 2015, dealing a serious blow to the area’s tourism industry, which relies heavily on Russian visitors.

Egypt’s tourism industry, a crucial source of hard currency, has suffered in the years of turmoil that followed the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, as well as from the suspected bombing of the Russian plane, which killed all 224 on board.

Israel took the unusual step earlier this month of barring its citizens from crossing into the Sinai peninsula, saying the threat of attacks in the area inspired by Islamic State and other jihadi groups was high.

(Reporting by Ali Abdelaty; Additional reporting by Ahmed Mohamed Hassan and Yousri Mohamed; Writing by Eric Knecht; Editing by Giles Elgood and Tom Brown)

Gunman targeting white men kills three in Fresno, California

A road is blocked by police tape after a multiple victim shooting incident in downtown Fresno, California, U.S. April 18, 2017. Fresno County Sheriff/Handout via REUTERS

By Dan Whitcomb

(Reuters) – A gunman who went by the nickname Black Jesus killed three white men in downtown Fresno, California, on Tuesday, and fired at another before he was taken into custody while shouting “Allahu Akhbar,” police said.

The suspect, 39-year-old Kori Ali Muhammad, was also wanted in connection with the fatal shooting last week of an unarmed security guard at a Motel 6 in Fresno, Police Chief Jerry Dyer told reporters at a press conference.

Dyer said Muhammad fired at least 16 rounds from a large-caliber handgun in less than a minute at four downtown Fresno locations at about 10:45 a.m. local time before he was spotted running through the streets by a police officer.

“Immediately upon the individual seeing the officer he literally dove onto the ground and was taken into custody and as he was taken into custody he yelled out ‘Allahu Akhbar,'” Dyer said. The term means “God is great” in Arabic.

“He does not like white people,” Dyer said, citing the suspect’s statements after being arrested and his Facebook postings. The chief said Muhammad, who is African American, used the nickname Black Jesus.

All four of the men killed on Tuesday were white, as was the security guard and the other man Mohammad shot at but missed.

Dyer said it was too early to rule out terrorism and that his department had contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate, but portrayed the incident as “a random act of violence.”

“These individuals who were chosen today did not do anything to deserve what they got,” he said. “These were unprovoked attacks by an individual who was intent on carrying out homicides today, and he did that.”

Dyer said Muhammad had been identified quickly as the prime suspect in the Motel 6 shooting on April 13 and that police had been urgently seeking him across the Fresno area since then.

Fresno is an agricultural hub in California’s central valley, about 170 miles southeast of San Francisco.

Muhammad has a criminal history that includes weapons and drug charges and had spent time in state prison, Dyer said.

County government buildings were placed on lockdown during the shooting spree and residents were urged to shelter in place.

Local television images showed what appeared to be a body covered in a yellow tarp in a street near where police tape marked off several crime scenes.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb and Steve Gorman; Editing by Richard Chang)

Three killed in Fresno, California, shooting spree, suspect arrested

A road is blocked by police tape after a multiple victim shooting incident in downtown Fresno, California, U.S. April 18, 2017. Fresno County Sheriff/Handout via REUTERS

By Dan Whitcomb

(Reuters) – A gunman with an apparent dislike of white people and government killed three people in downtown Fresno, California, on Tuesday, before he was taken into custody while shouting “Allahu Akhbar,” police said.

The suspect, identified as 39-year-old Kori Ali Muhammad, was also wanted in connection with the fatal shooting last week of an unarmed security guard at a Motel 6 in Fresno, Police Chief Jerry Dyer told reporters at a press conference.

Dyer said Muhammad fired at least 16 rounds in less than a minute at four downtown Fresno locations at about 10:45 a.m. local time before he was spotted running through the streets by a police officer.

“Immediately upon the individual seeing the officer he literally dove onto the ground and was taken into custody and as he was taken into custody he yelled out ‘Allahu Akhbar,'” Dyer said. The term means “God is great” in Arabic.

“He does not like white people,” Dyer said, citing the black suspect’s statements after being arrested and his Facebook postings. At least two of his victims were white.

Dyer said his department had contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation over the incident.

The Fresno Bee newspaper reported that the gunman opened fire with a large-caliber handgun while cursing shortly before 11 a.m. near a Catholic Charities building.

Fresno is an agricultural hub in California’s central valley, about 170 miles southeast of San Francisco.

County government buildings were placed on lockdown and residents were urged to shelter in place, according to the newspaper.

Local television images showed what appeared to be a body covered in a yellow tarp in a street near where police tape marked off several crime scenes.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb and Steve Gorman; Editing by Richard Chang)

One killed, three wounded in shooting aboard Atlanta metro

By Ian Simpson

(Reuters) – A man opened fire aboard a moving Atlanta metro train on Thursday, killing one man and wounding three other passengers before the suspected gunman was arrested at the next station, a police spokesman said.

The gunfire erupted aboard a Blue Line train at about 4:30 p.m. shortly after it left a station on the city’s west side, Joseph Dorsey, deputy chief of the MARTA police, said at a news conference. MARTA is the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority.

“As the train was in motion, the suspect fired several shots toward the victims,” Dorsey said.

The three people who were wounded are expected to survive, Dorsey said. A fifth person suffered an ankle injury as passengers scrambled away from the gunman.

All the victims, as well as the suspected gunman, were in their 30s, Dorsey said.

The shooting was “targeted, but isolated,” MARTA’s Police Chief Wanda Dunham said, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper.

Police detained the suspected gunman at the train’s next stop, West Lake Station, and recovered a weapon, Dorsey said. He gave no information about a possible motive and said the shooting was under investigation.

A man who was in the train car told Atlanta’s Fox 5 television that a man wearing a hat sat next to another passenger, his head bobbing. The man then got up and walked to the back of the car.

“And after that, heard shots, hit the deck, and just saw some shoes walk past and that’s it,” said the man, who was not identified.

Cellphone video shot by a bystander and carried on the Fox station’s Facebook page showed a woman and another person lying on the floor of a train car as passengers bent over them.

The transit agency said the station had been temporarily closed.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washingon and Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Additional reporting by David Beasley in Atlanta; Editing by Sandra Maler and Leslie Adler)