The Other McCain

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Report: Nation of Islam Supporter Killed After Attacking Cops at U.S. Capitol

Posted on | April 3, 2021 | Comments Off on Report: Nation of Islam Supporter Killed After Attacking Cops at U.S. Capitol

When the news broke Friday afternoon that there had been an attack at the Capitol, intelligent people waited for police officials to identify the suspect before we speculated about the possible motive. But some people are not intelligent, and stupidly jumped to conclusions.

How many times have I warned about this in breaking news situations? You cannot know the motive for a shooting until you know the identity of the shooter, so when these incidents happen, the thing to do is to be patient. But the idiots on Twitter never seem to learn this lesson, so their wrong takes become part of the public record, permanent evidence of their folly. Meanwhile, the facts finally got reported:

Noah Green, 25, struck two officers, killing one, at the US Capitol just after 1 p.m. Friday, cops said.
Green got out of the car, wielding a knife, and lunged at officers before being fatally shot. Capitol Police Officer William Evans died 30 minutes after the attack at the hospital.
Green’s Facebook page, reviewed by The Post before it was taken down, wrote about Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and losing his job after graduating college.
In Instagram stories, some posted just hours before the attack, Green blamed the US government for his issues and wrote he believed federal law enforcement agencies were trying to conduct mind-control experiments on him, according to CNN.

Police said this was not a terrorist attack, by which standard, all the claims about “incel” attacks as terrorism are now invalid. What happens in most of those cases is (a) some guy’s life is miserable and (b) he turns to a weird hateful ideology to justify a “blaze of glory” fantasy where he kills a bunch of people and, usually, dies in the attack — either committing suicide or getting shot by cops. Frankly, most “lone wolf” white supremacist attacks also fit this description — the combination of a miserable life and a weird hateful ideology. So what, if anything, is the difference between those cases and Noah Green?

Hateful ideologies in general do not attract successful, happy people. In the case of Noah Green, we know that he embraced Nation of Islam as a teenager, because in his college football biographical sketch he said “person in history he’d most like to meet is Malcolm X.” But there was no indication of a tendency toward violence, and Green apparently had no criminal record before Friday’s attack. He lost his job and his mind slowly began unraveling:

Andre Toran, who was a captain on the football team at the time, said Green was a “really quiet guy” who would crack jokes every once in a while but usually just smiled instead of chiming in on conversations.
“I know people say this all the time, but the guy who I played with is not the same person who did this,” said Toran, a reporter at the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky . . .
Toran said while he moved away to attend graduate school in Chicago, Green’s mental state became an issue of concern among their friends.
Toran shared a Facebook post from Green during the COVID-19 pandemic in which Green accused his roommates of drugging him. Green wrote that he’d moved out but was suffering from withdrawals that included seizures and a lack of appetite, along with “paranoia” and “depression.” He wrote in the post that he was also experiencing “suicidal ideation.” . . .
KC Humphries, who attended CNU with Green, told USA TODAY they worked together at the school’s gym.
“He kind of came off as the average football athlete,” she said.
But, she added, she noticed the recent changes in his social media posts.
“They were very weird. It was posts about joining his church and ‘one day you’ll see’ kind of stuff,” Humphries said. “It was just a lot of weird, kind of cult stuff.”
On what appeared to be Green’s Facebook page, he posted last month about struggling over the last several years and his issues during the pandemic, including losing a job. He talked about his recent “spiritual journey.” . . .
One of Green’s brothers told The Washington Post that Noah Green appeared to have mentally unraveled in the last several years. He abruptly moved from Virginia to Indiana and told his brother, Brendan, he was suffering from hallucinations, heart palpitations, headaches and suicidal thoughts. Brendan Green told the paper his brother informed him the drugs told him to move to Indianapolis.
In Indiana, Noah told his brother that people were attempting to break into his apartment. Brendan Green said he flew out to Indianapolis but didn’t see anything suspicious and told The Post that Noah’s “mind didn’t seem right.”
A few months ago, Noah Green moved to Botswana, his brother told the Post. The brothers kept in contact and at one point, Noah told Brendan that “his mind was telling him to basically commit suicide” and said he’d jumped in front of a car, Brendan told The Post. Several weeks ago, Brendan allowed Noah to come live with him after Noah said he was “in a really bad situation.”

As is typical in such cases, there were “red flags” in the case of Noah Green, just as there were “red flags” in the case of Elliot Rodger, and “red flags” in the case of Robert Aaron Long, and other mass-murder cases.

Moral of the story? Crazy People Are Dangerous.




 

Category: Crime, Racism

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