Posted on 10/25/2002 10:28:08 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Sniper suspect leads FBI, police, media swarm to sleepy'burb
PINOLE -- Suburban Pinole was deluged Thursday with FBI agents, local police, scores of news reporters and neighbors who wanted answers about a sniper suspect's possible connection to the bedroom community. Sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad, 41, previously known as John Allen Williams, once lived with Charlene Jackson, his former sister-in-law, in a house on Limerick Road in the Garrity Ridge housing development off San Pablo Avenue, according to neighbors and a Department of Motor Vehicles tracking system. Although she talked with FBI agents, at least one network newsman and local police, Jackson spoke only briefly to a pack of reporters stationed outside her modest home. "Right now, we really can't comment," Jackson said. "We are very sympathetic, we just can't imagine what is going on. How can you relate to something like this?" Asked to elaborate, Jackson refused. Muhammad had been divorced twice, but it was not clear late Thursday how Jackson once was related to the suspect. Muhammad, a U.S. Army veteran, and John Lee Malvo, a 17-year-old he called his son, were arrested at a Maryland rest stop before dawn Thursday in connection with the Washington-area's three-week sniping spree that killed 10 people and wounded three. The news that Muhammad had a Bay Area connection shocked Pinole residents. "Nobody really knows what goes on behind anybody else's door," said neighbor Walter Hughes. "It's shocking, but stuff like (the sniper shootings) happen." Neighbors said that back around 1992, roughly the same time Muhammad lived in the Pinole house, FBI agents questioned them about the man. "A long time ago, (the FBI) came over here and asked people about the people across the street," said a 21-year-old neighbor who refused to give his name. The neighbor said he and his parents lived on the street at the time. He added that the family believed the FBI questioning was related to Muhammad's military service. During that military service, Muhammad was stationed at Fort Ord in Monterey County, as well as other places. He served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Neighbors said they recognized the war veteran as part of a "group of men" who used to hang out in the Pinole home's garage, listen to music and wash cars.
But there were more questions than answers in Pinole on Thursday. Jackson allowed into the house FBI agents, a TV news reporter working for the ABC network and local police. All refused comment later and Pinole police were equally mum. Pinole Police Cmdr. Phil Pollard said, "The (FBI) task force asked (Pinole police) to check the address and we did so." Police never had contact with the residents of the house until Thursday, Pollard said. The flurry of law enforcement activity on Limerick Road is the latest event to put Pinole in the national spotlight. The residential community has seen a kidnapping, racial uproar, a molestation case involving a defrocked Catholic priest and the arrest of kidnapper-rapist Larry Singleton, who lived in the city's Tara Hills district, in the last few decades. In May, police arrested Pinole resident Stephen Miller Kiesle on two counts of child molestation stemming from his time at St. Joseph Catholic Church in Pinole. He was already charged with seven counts of child molestation in Fremont. Pinole was also where 7-year-old Amber Swartz lived when she disappeared while skipping rope in front of her house in June 1988. And in the early 1990s, an uproar involving accusations that Mayor John Goularte had voiced racial slurs tore the town apart. Pinole Mayor Betty Boyle said she believes the city's streak of notoriety is nothing more than a coincidence. "It could happen in any city. We have 19,000 people, there have to be a few who are not following the law." Boyle said she did not know Muhammad lived in Pinole before Thursday. "If he did live here, we didn't know him." Wire services and staff writers William Brand and Sean Holstege contributed to this report.
Now isn't that interesting!
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By the way, I seem to remember that Fort Ord had closed down by 1992.
Makes sense, since Muhammad was transferred back to Fort Lewis, Washingon in 1993.
This is the earliest report, so far, of FBI involvement regarding Muhammad.
The second was a call (not verified independently) to FBI in October 2001, by Rev. Al Archer, who ran the halfway house in Bellingham, WA, where Muhammad stayed with Malvo.
The third was a July 2002 meeting with local LE and FBI by Harjee Singh, a Bellingham acquaintance of Muhammad, who told them about Muhammad's stated intentions to "kill police," and his inquiries about getting/building a silencer. The FBI verified this meeting, but said they referred it to ATF (who had no comment), per an AP story.
Both Muhammad and Malvo was arrested and jailed in December 2001 -- James in Seattle and Malvo in a juvenile facility in Spokane -- after border officers in Bellingham notified INS that they were here illegally. Malvo was here illegally, but there's no explanation of why Muhammad was jailed. Curious.
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