Posted on 10/04/2005 11:29:02 PM PDT by indcons
NORMAN - The FBI has found no evidence so far that a University of Oklahoma student who died in a bombing Saturday night tried to get inside the football stadium or had ties to any terrorist organization, officials said Tuesday.
The FBI also has found no evidence anyone else was involved, officials said. Still, OU plans to tighten security at upcoming football games. Fans can expect bags and purses to be checked more closely.
“They should come a little earlier,” OU President David Boren said. “Be patient with us - know it’s only for their safety that we’re being very, very thorough.”
Fans also will not be allowed to leave at the half on passes and return.
Joel “Joe” Henry Hinrichs III is believed to have died in an explosion about 7:30 p.m. Saturday on a campus bench about 100 yards from the packed Gaylord Family - Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Investigators are treating the death as a suicide.
OU was playing Kansas State before more than 80,000 fans. The game was in the second quarter. The blast could be heard inside the stadium.
Explosives later were removed from the student’s university-owned apartment.
The FBI continues to investigate. One agent re-interviewed the student’s father Tuesday in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Hinrichs, 21, was a junior majoring in engineering. He has been described by his family and the university as a loner with emotional difficulties. He dropped out in 2003-2004 but returned.
The FBI has reviewed surveillance tapes, interviewed acquaintances and checked Hinrichs’ purchases.
The FBI also looked at possible ties to Islamic groups after learning Hinrichs’ roommate is from Pakistan, attended a nearby mosque and worked for the OU athletics department, The Oklahoman has learned.
lol..PC..but both would be better.How bout the PC/DC BUREAUCRATS! Has a ring to it, wouldn't you say?
Don't know...pinging PKM.....she was there at the game and entered through gate 7!!!!! She may be able to answer this question.
I agree- I am not really very confident that our FBI is all aboard with our War on Terror. Seems like they are still playing CYA games, but just maybe, hopefully, they are being silent for our benefit......?????
Since this is Jim's forum, I am compelled to adhere to a specific level of decorum. This does not restrict me from stating that I am painfully cognizant of a rather large group of nonaligned individuals that have an express intent of making hajji's go away, or face terrestial extinction.
Thanks! That's great. I already had Cheema on my list, but didn't know it was the right one!
I had been wondering if he was part of another family of Cheemas at school in Norman who are from Tulsa, or if he was possibly the "Faisal" Cheema from Urbana, IL, which is where Joel III's sister Berkeley lives.
Great research, RTE66......great stuff indeed.
I didn't know that Bagdad Bob was now a Special Agent.
LOL.....You owe me a new keyboard now; just spat coke all ovre it from the laughter :)
We also had a SoonerFan forum person post that they had seen a "young man" in handcuffs near the stadium when the poster left 3 minutes before halftime to go to his campus office. There were three cops with the "young man" who was handcuffed and they were pretty gruff with the Soonerfan, sort of saying to "move on." He just thought the guy (who was on the ground) was a drunk. Bet it was one of the guys from the party.
"I agree- I am not really very confident that our FBI is all aboard with our War on Terror. Seems like they are still playing CYA games, but just maybe, hopefully, they are being silent for our benefit......?????"
Look...I am a pro military, pro CIA, pro FBI, pro Police kinda gal, but I remember the days when they had press conferences after bad stuff happened and they didn't all sound like a bunch of total fools(except during waco). It does not inspire confidence at this point. I don't know what I am more pissed off at..their lack of respect for the American people's ability to 'comprehend' and decipher this whole thing..or their BS spin on it. They must think the American people are stuck on stupid..or is it that THEY ARE STUCK ON STUPID? At this point I want to be the first one on Freepers to ask General HONORE to run for President in 2008 on the Republican ticket.
The rest of the 80,000 fans saw the ghastly open wound and his blood-covered wife on the fifty foot tall video screens, and the panic began to spread from one end of the stadium to the other. Police radios crackled with reports of death and injury, police marksmen dashed out and scanned the stadium’s upper tiers and light towers through their binoculars and rifle scopes. The sudden appearance of black-clad police marksmen with their rifles shouldered was noticed by mystified fans throughout the stadium, adding depth to the rippling fear.
Complete pandemonium erupted through the western upper deck as the realization spread like a wind-whipped forest fire that an unseen sniper had them all in his deadly crosshair gaze. Six thousand adrenaline glands pumped out their ultimate fight-or-flight hormone. Unthinking mob psychology seized the crowd, and nearly all of the fans who were penned up in the killing zone stampeded down the steps and over the chairs. This fear-driven horde charged straight over the smaller and slower fans in their desperation to reach the perceived safety of one of the four exit tunnels.
It had taken well over an hour before the game for six thousand cheerful individuals to fill all of the seats on the steeply sloping upper deck. Many of the fans routinely grew dizzy and flirted dangerously with vertigo while climbing the concrete stairs, which were as high and as steeply pitched as the roof of a cathedral. Now, gripped by primal terror and racing down to the exits, the thousands of fans attempted to do the impossible, they all attempted to escape the unrelenting rain of bullets in less than a single minute.
Police, paramedics, security personnel and the just plain curious were beginning to rush from the stadium’s inside concourse through the tunnels to the stands when they ran headlong into the leading elements of the outpouring human tide. This slowed them enough to precipitate immediate jams at each of the four exits. But the terror of the fleeing mobs in the stands above the exit tunnels did not abate as the bullets continued to fall, and the crush began in earnest.
A hundred tightly pressed bodies, propelled by fear and assisted by gravity, pushed hard against each unlucky person already wedged against the safety railing at the bottom of the upper deck. The rails bent outward as the human avalanche gathered momentum, and then they buckled and victims began to tumble over. The falling victims were still holding tightly onto those above, pulling them over as well, and the solid cascade began. Dozens and then hundreds of linked victims fell past the VIP sky boxes, thudding down onto the unfortunate fans packed into the lower stands ninety feet below.
Story is getting more coverage now......at least we have more info now. The next couple of days will be really interesting based on what else comes out.
"YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!"
Jihad Joey's sister is named BERKELEY?
Are you kidding?
They renumbered the gates when they did the addition. We used to go in gate 23 but now we go in Gate 7 which is on the NE corner of the stadium and one of the emergency exits. I am assuming that Gate 6 is on the north end zone. He blew up on a bench on the oval which would be a couple hundred yards from that gate maybe a little more.
There is usually a lot of people in that area even the game so him taking off wouldn't be that noticed -- probably figured he was late for something.
Nope, it's true. She's a foreign language interpreter. So far, all I've seen is Spanish, but that might not be all.
"Story is getting more coverage now......at least we have more info now. The next couple of days will be really interesting based on what else comes out."
Your right..i need to calm down..lol. The Freepers have been the 'belle of the balls'(pardon the pun) on this story. I love this place and it's people!! Told Jim he is getting a nice fat check when bean time rolls around sometime in November. Sadly,the hurricanes might put a dent in it, but Freepers will get my money before any anyone 'else' that knocks on my bank account door at regular intervals, if u know what i mean. Keep up the good work indcons.
http://search.ou.edu/default.cfm?CFID=786681&CFTOKEN=24897810
Fazal M. Cheema fazalcheema at OU dot edu
Student Info
Senior
price college of business
Campus Office
Athletic Department
Student Employee
OMS
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