Private William Long, newly out of basic training was on a short-term assignment as a military recruiter, was shot three times and killed outside the Army-Navy Career Center in Little Rock Arkansas by a domestic jihadist who also wounded another soldier.
The alleged killer Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, 23, was born in Tennessee as Carlos Leon Bledsoe and converted to Islam as a teen-ager. He just opened fire on the soldiers with an SKS assault rifle and he said he fully intended to kill them, in fact, he would have killed more if he could, he told police.
From Maggie’s Notebook
He had been under FBI investigation – - the FBI’s Joint Terrorist Task Force – since he returned from a trip to Yemen.
He was carrying a false Somali passport and was arrested at that time. The same report says Muhammad had “ties to a number of global locations linked to extremists, including Yemen, Somalia and Columbus, OH..
Atlas Shrugs reports that he was arrested for serious weapons possession and gun running, but prosecutors filed only a single charge that was dismissed four months later.
In an interview with the Associated Press, the suspect said he didn’t think the shooting was murder because U.S. military action in the MIddle East made the killing justified- “Islamic justified”.
“I do feel I’m not guilty,” Abdulhakim Muhammad told The Associated Press in a collect call from the Pulaski County jail. “I don’t think it was murder, because murder is when a person kills another person without justified reason…what I did is Islamic justified”
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“Yes, I did tell the police upon my arrest that this was an act of retaliation, and not a reaction on the soldiers personally,” Muhammad said. He called it “a act, for the sake of God, for the sake of Allah, the Lord of all the world, and also a retaliation on U.S. military.”
Private Long was laid to rest as a Soldier, Hero
The day before he died, U.S. Army Pvt. William Andrew “Andy” Long floated the Buffalo River with his sister, Vanessa Rice. If he had his way, she said, the pair would have gone skydiving.
“I’m so blessed to have had that day with Andy,” Rice tearfully told guests at her brother’s funeral Monday at Harlan Park Baptist Church in Conway. “My brother meant the world to me. Andy loved to be outdoors, to travel, and he couldn’t wait to get to Korea to serve his country.”
The service was followed by a burial with full military honors Monday at the Arkansas State Veterans Cemetery in North Little Rock.
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Pastor Johnny Harrington of Long’s church, Sunny Gap Baptist Church in Conway, praised Long’s commitment to the Army and recent appointment to the Army’s Hometown Recruiter Assistance Program in Little Rock. He said Long is a fourth-generation armed services member. Long’s father, Daris Long, is retired from the U.S. Marine Corps.
“No one is more military, no one is more patriotic than this family right here,” Harrington said. “Military runs through their hearts and their blood. No one is more dedicated to it than they, and I know that they couldn’t be prouder of Andy and his desire to serve his country.
“I asked Daris what’s the one word he’d use to describe Andy, and he said two: soldier and hero.”
Private Long’s father was at work when he got the call; his mother was in the center’s parking lot waiting to give their son a ride home. She heard the shots.
Most moving of all is the interview of Darius Long, father of the slain soldier, gracious and grateful in his grief. (HT Ace). My condolences to all his family.