A preliminary hearing for Mohamed H. Dawod is set to take place Oct. 12. Now, one question remains: Will the mainstream media show any interest in the case that involves a man with a Muslim name shooting a man he didn’t know in a public place on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States?
A 25-year-old man from Glendale, Ariz., Dawod pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the Sept. 8 shooting death of Justin Hall, 32, of Mt. Vernon, Ohio, at a Greyhound bus station in Springfield, Mo.
On Oct. 12, Dawod will appear before Judge Mark Fitzsimmons at 9 a.m. inside a courtroom at the Greene County (Mo.) Courthouse to answer charges that he shot and killed Hall in front of a crowd of fellow passengers on the bus traveling from Amarillo, Texas, to St. Louis.
Now, especially for members of the mainstream media, I’ll offer some background on the case.
In my first report on the shooting, published the morning of Sept. 9, I wondered whether or not this was a case of terrorism but reported it as only a possibility after officials in the Southwest Missouri community quickly said the shooting appeared random.
In an update several hours later, I cited a local television station report that raised questions about the alleged randomness of the shooting when it quoted Springfield police officials as saying that, because of a language barrier, they had only learned Dawod’s name and had asked the FBI to help them with the investigation. In other words, I wondered how they could declare a shooting “random” if they were not able to communicate with the suspect.
In the same update, I shared a telling paragraph from the same television station report:
Ten separate witnesses say they did not notice the men fighting or arguing before the shooting. One passenger said she watched the suspect wander around the terminal until the call to line up to re-board the bus. “She then observed the suspect remove a silver and black handgun from a back pack he was carrying,” the officer wrote. “The suspect then pointed the handgun upward while saying something. The witness could not understand what the suspect said and didn’t know if he was speaking English.” No matter what was said the witness said Hall didn’t react or turn around. Shortly after the witness says Dawod shot him from a few feet away.
I also asked another question:
Could it be that, when the man pointed the handgun in the air, he shouted, “Alluh Akbar,” the cry that’s been heard coming from the mouths of so many Islamic extremists moments before they suffer from so-called “sudden jihad syndrome”?
Based largely on interviews with three people who were at the scene of the shooting, the report noted two observations — that the shooter tried to fire again but could not because his gun jammed and that the witnesses believed the shooter intended to shoot several people — that I had already reported in my original post.
In addition, however, it noted that Patrick Beeman, a friend and traveling companion of the victim, said Dawod asked police a question in English after he was arrested: “He said, ‘if I quit shooting at people, can I get back on the bus?'” So Dawod does speak English.
I concluded that update with an observation, writing: The extent to which Dawod might carry out his version of “legal jihad” — that is, causing the U.S. court system to waste as much time, effort and money as possible on his case — remains to be seen.
What else remains to be seen is the extent to which the mainstream news media outside of Springfield covers this case if, indeed, they cover it at all. After all, neither the FBI nor the Department of Homeland Security have breathed a peep about the possibility of this being a pre-9/11 anniversary terror attack.
Now, if he had been a member of the Tea Party Movement — WHOA! — things would be different!
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