ISIL-style Beheadings Come To America

A recent Muslim convert, angry because he had been fired, beheaded a 54-year-old woman and attacked another woman until a manager with a gun shot him (though not fatally). The killer, Alton Nolen, had jihadist slogans and ISIL beheading videos on his FaceBook page. The reason he was fired was reportedly because of an argument he started at work advocating the stoning of women. (See this.) This happened in my native state of Oklahoma in Moore, the tornado-afflicted suburb of Oklahoma City that I know well.

Note my prediction. Nolen is probably not formally affiliated with ISIL, but he shares that group’s jihadist ideology. Authorities are classifying the beheading as “workplace violence.” But isn’t it also terrorism, an extension of what ISIL is doing in Syria and Iraq?

From Police: Oklahoma man beheaded former co-worker and attacked another just after his firing – The Washington Post:

A man who had just been fired by an Oklahoma City-area food processing plant allegedly severed the head of one of his former co-workers and attacked another before being shot by the company’s chief operating officer, according to police.

The suspect — 30-year-old Alton Nolen — walked into the front office of the Vaughan Foods processing plant in Moore after his firing Thursday and attacked employee Colleen Hufford, Moore Police Sgt. Jeremy Lewis said in a statement.

Nolen attacked Hufford with a knife and severed her head, the statement said. “Yes, she was beheaded,” Lewis confirmed to the Associated Press.

Nolen was attacking a second woman at the plant — 43-year-old Traci Johnson — when, Lewis said, he was shot by Mark Vaughan, a top executive at Vaughan Foods who is also a reserve deputy with the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Department.

“This was not going to stop if he didn’t stop it,” Lewis said Friday. “It could have gotten a lot worse.”

Nolen was hospitalized and police are waiting until he is conscious to arrest him, according to the AP. Lewis did not know what charges would be filed, the AP reported.

Alton Nolen in a picture from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections taken Oct. 18, 2011. (Oklahoma Department of Corrections via Reuters)

According to the police statement, after interviewing Nolen’s former co-workers, “information was obtained that he recently started trying to convert several employees to the Muslim religion.”

“Due to the manner of death and the initial statements of co-workers and other initial information, the Moore Police Department requested the assistance of the FBI in conducting a background investigation.”

Two federal law enforcement officials told The Post that Nolen is a recent convert to Islam.

One of the federal officials called Nolen’s Facebook page “provocative,” saying it included a photo of Osama bin Laden. A Facebook page appearing to be Nolen’s includes a wide range of photos, including one depicting a beheading and another of Omar al-Shishani, a prominent Islamic State fighter who is Chechen.

But the FBI, which is assisting in the investigation, has so far found no links to terrorism, the officials said. There was also no indication that Nolen was copying the beheadings of journalists in Syria by the Islamic State, the officials said, adding that they are treating this as an incident of workplace violence.