Shooting Focus on Fresno's Fulton

Steve Stephens may have only shot one person randomly, but he claimed to have killed 15. There is no evidence of that rumor. But as a rumor, it may have carried some punch.

The center of the attention for the shooting was Fulton.

In Fresno, California, on April 18, 2017, a man went on a shooting rampage, and claimed three victims killed around Fulton Street and another dead at a Motel 6.

The Fresno Bee covered the details (partially recorded here):

Three people were shot and killed after a man went on a shooting rampage Tuesday in Fresno, randomly shooting at four white men, killing three, before he was taken into custody, police Chief Jerry Dyer said.
The 39-year-old suspect, identified as Kori Ali Muhammad, is also suspected in the fatal shooting of a security guard outside a Motel 6 on Blackstone Avenue in central Fresno Thursday. He is facing four counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder, Dyer said. He said Muhammad had expressed dislike of whites in Facebook posts; all of the victims were white. Dyer called it a “random act of violence.”
Two of the people shot outside Catholic Charities, on Fulton Street just north of downtown, may have been clients of the social service agency, not employees, Dyer said. The third victim was a Pacific Gas & Electric employee riding in a company truck. A fourth man was shot at but not injured.
Dyer said the gunman walked up to the PG&E truck in the 300 block of North Van Ness Avenue about 10:45 a.m. and shot the passenger repeatedly. The driver of the pickup then sped to Fresno police headquarters on M Street. The second shooting was only a few seconds later and was at Van Ness and Mildreda Street, where the gunman shot at but missed a resident. The gunman then turned onto Fulton Street and fired several rounds at another man, striking and killing him, Dyer said. After reloading at a bus stop, the gunman then shot and killed a man in the parking lot of Catholic Charities in the 100 block of North Fulton Street, he said.
Officers responding to the initial shotspotter reports found Muhammad running south on Fulton. Muhammad dove to the ground and yelled “Ali Akbar” before he was taken into custody, Dyer said. Although police found rounds of .357 caliber bullets and speed loaders for a revolver when Muhammad was taken into custody, no weapon was found, Dyer said.
Dyer said that it’s too soon to determine if the shootings involved terrorism.
However, a review of Muhammad’s social media shows he quoted the phrase “Allahu Akbar” in a tweet. The Arabic phrase translates to “God is the greatest.”
***
Muhammad was identified early in the Motel 6 murder, based on the surveillance cameras, and officers had sought him in Madera and other locations in subsequent days. His Facebook page at one point indicated that he was in Atlanta, which was untrue, Dyer said. His Facebook posts indicated that “he does not like white people, and he has anti-government sentiments,” the chief said.
Witnesses reported the gunman sprayed rounds while reloading and cursing.
A second gunshot victim was reported outside of the Fresno Police Department station at Mariposa Mall and M Street at 10:51 a.m. The victim also was taken to Community Regional Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, Dyer said.
Police are investigating at four separate crime scenes on Van Ness, Mildreda and Fulton, and those areas will remain closed for at least a few hours, Dyer said. At least one shooting victim remained on the scene, and officers with K-9 are searching for the murder weapon.
At 10:54 a.m., a report of a man down was reported at 215 N. Fulton St., about a block from Catholic Charities. That victim died at the scene, county Emergency Medical Services officials confirmed.
*** Fresno Bee

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/crime/article145234709.html#storylink=cpy

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Memphis Pyramid Site of Spree

Memphis, Tennessee, was named after Memphis, Egypt. Memphis was the ancient capital of Aneb-Hetch, the first nome of Lower Egypt. Its ruins are located near the town of Mit Rahina, 20 km (12 mi) south of Giza.

Memphis was believed to be under the protection of the god Ptah, the patron of craftsmen. Its great temple, Hut-ka-Ptah (meaning "Enclosure of the ka of Ptah"), was one of the most prominent structures in the city. The name of this temple, rendered in Greek as Aί γυ πτoς (Ai-gy-ptos) by the historian Manetho, is believed to be the etymological origin of the modern English name Egypt.

Memphis is closely associated with the ancient Egypt's capital city site, 25 km south of Cairo. This is where the cemeteries, or necropolises, of Memphis, and the famous pyramids of Egypt and the Great Sphinx are located.

(For more on the use of Egyptian names in this part of the country, see "#9 The Little Egypt Triangle," here.)

Memphis, Tennessee, was the focus of a shooting spree on 6.4.2016. The outcome was the death of a policeman.

Some of the highlights of the story are noted here:

An 18-year veteran of the Memphis Police Department died Saturday night, [June 4, 2016,] after being struck downtown by the vehicle of a fleeing shooting suspect.
Verdell Smith, 46, died at the Regional Medical Center at Memphis....no charges have been filed yet against the suspect who felled Smith, who left a father, fiance and children.
Smith was struck after the unidentified suspect, who was taken into custody and transported to the Regional Medical Center in noncritical condition, shot three people during a spree that began in the Pinch District at Westy's Restaurant and Bar and spilled over to Bass Pro Shops before ending near Beale and Third streets.

...Police at Main and Exchange heard shots at 9:55 p.m. and found two male victims at Westy's. They were transported to Regional Medical Center and remained in critical condition.
At 10:02 p.m.,...police got a call to the nearby Bass Pro, where a male employee had been shot. He was taken to Regional Medical Center in noncritical condition.
The suspect fled in a silver vehicle and was spotted on Riverside Drive before officers lost sight near the interstate.
...Police weren't sure what route the suspect took next, but he ended up at Beale and Third as officers were working to clear the area. That's where Smith was struck.
The suspect was taken into custody after a foot chase.
Martin Norris and Jake Schorr IV, employees of Westy’s, said a man walked up from the south on Main Street, talking loudly to himself, pulled a handgun and shot two customers who were sitting at a picnic table in front of the restaurant.
Norris and Schorr chased the man down the block, but he crossed Front Street and jumped a fence, heading toward the parking lot of Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid.

There, truck driver Luis Cortez of Laredo, Texas, was exiting Bass Pro with his family when he heard gunshots in the parking lot. Cortez said the victim appeared to be a store employee who had been collecting shopping carts.
Cortez said he saw a car near the victim, but couldn’t see inside it because of dark-tinted windows. The car sped away and the victim ran to the store entrance, Cortez said.
Memphis resident Tina Jamison said she was on Beale when the crash occurred, and she approached officers on the street.
"We heard on the scanner, 'officer down,'" Jamison said.
She said when she heard commotion, she initially thought there had been a fight on Beale.
"They told us to go inside one of the restaurants," she said. ~ Commercial Appeal.

In 2015, Bass Pro Shops opened its very own monument. At 32 stories tall, this superstore is the sixth largest pyramid in the world.

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June 4: This Date in History

June 4, 1862 – American Civil War: Confederate troops evacuate Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River, leaving the way clear for Union troops to take Memphis, Tennessee.

Known for The Werewolf of Ansbach, Killing Spree Visits Area

A suspect has been caught by police after allegedly shooting to death two people in a killing spree in Ansbach in northern Bavaria, Germany, on Friday morning, July 10, 2010.

The area is known as the site of famed werewolf account, in many ways, a German version of the Beast of Gévaudan (La Bête Du Gévaudan).

Coat of Arms of Anspach.

The name of the town was originally Onolzbach, meaning "On'z Brook". It was also formerly known as Anspach.

The Wolf of Ansbach was a man-eating wolf that attacked and killed an unknown number of people in the Principality of Ansbach in 1685, then a part of the Holy Roman Empire. Initially a nuisance preying on livestock, the wolf soon began attacking women and children. The citizens of Ansbach believed the animal to be a werewolf, a reincarnation of their late and cruel Bürgermeister, whose recent death had gone unlamented. During an organized hunt the locals succeeded in driving the wolf from a nearby forest and chasing it down with dogs until it leaped into an uncovered well for protection. Trapped, the wolf was slain, and its carcass paraded through the city marketplace. It was dressed in a man's clothing and, after severing its muzzle, the crowd placed a mask, wig, and beard upon its head, giving it the appearance of the former Bürgermeister. The wolf's body was then hanged from a gibbet for all to see until it underwent preservation for permanent display at a local museum. (See also, The Book of Werewolves by Sabine Baring-Gould, and The Werewolf by Montague Summers).

Franz Ritter von Kobell and other writers wrote poems about the wolf and its actions.

The man arrested in conjunction with the July 10, 2015, Ansbach shooting is thought to be around 47 years old, is alleged to have driven in a silver Mercedes convertible to the village of Tiefenthal, where he stopped and had a brief exchange of words with an 82-year-old woman before shooting her dead.

Tuefebthal literally translates as "the deep valley." The municipality lies in a small hollow with northern slopes between the Eisbach and Eckbach valleys in the Palatinate. Tiefenthal belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Hettenleidelheim, whose seat is in the like-named municipality. Until 1969, the municipality belonged to the now abolished district of Frankenthal.

The German blazon reads: In Rot ein goldenes Tatzenkreuz. (A golden cross in red.)
Tiefenthal’s arms might in English heraldic language be described thus: Gules a cross pattée humetty Or. The arms were approved by the now defunct Regierungsbezirk administration in Neustadt and date from a 1724 seal. They are borrowed from the arms once borne by the Counts of Leiningen-Westerburg, to whom Tiefenthal belonged.

The suspect fled the scene before shooting and killing a 72-year-old male cyclist 5km away in Rammersdorf.

Another man was threatened with a gun, and shortly afterwards a tractor driver was shot at, but was unhurt, police said.

Two mechanics working at a petrol station in Bad Windsheim overpowered the man after he entered the shop and threatened employees with a gun, police said.

Police said the man, named as Bernd G, was not previously known to the authorities.

Gerhard Neuhof, a senior public prosecutor in Ansbach, said there was no indication the gunman knew his victims and the incident appeared to have been a random killing spree.

The mayor of Leutershausen, Siegfried Hess, said he was shocked by the attack, according to the newspaper the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Crime scene investigators in Leutershausen, near Ansbach (EPA)

Hess told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that he was "totally shocked".

Hess described the killings as "probably the worst crime in the history of the town." He said he had already sent his condolences to the family of the 82-year-old victim, and said he believed the suspect did not know the woman.

Apparently Herr Hess is unaware of the werewolf history of Ansbach!