User:Bachcell/sandbox/Ali Muhammad Brown

Ali Muhammad Brown is the the prime suspect in a 2014 murder spree. Police believe, and Brown has confessed to killing three people in Washington state and shooting 19-year-old college student Brendan Tevlin in West Orange, New Jersey. Brown has told investigators that he is guided strictly by his faith, and that the killings were "just" because they were in retaliation for actions by the U.S. government in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

Timeline
Brown was born in the United States, and he has family in New Jersey.

From January 2002 to November 2004, Brown with three accomplices defrauded the Bank of America, Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo, and other banks out of large sums of money. The group was led by barber Ruben Shumpert who later fled to Somalia, where he died fighting for Al Shabab. The scam involved depositing bad checks, and then withdrawing cash before the checks were returned. Authorities believed that the effort was to fund militant Islamist terrorist groups in Somalia, but were unable to prove the link. Brown was convicted of bank fraud in federal court in 2005 and served time in jail.

In March 2012, Brown pleaded guilty to "communication with a minor for immoral purposes" and served a year in prison.

On April 27, 2014, Leroy Henderson was shot 10 times and killed by a man later identified as Brown in a drive-by shooting in his girlfriend's Dodge Durango in Seattle's Skyway neighborhood.

On June 1, Ahmed Said, 27, and Dwone Anderson-Young, 23, were killed shortly after midnight in the Leschi neighborhood of Seattle. Both victims were gay, apparently targeted by finding them on grindr, a social app popular with gays. The case was soon investigated as a possible hate crime. They were shot multiple times in Said's car and the suspect left a bloody palm print behind, along with distinctive 9mm casings.

On June 25, 2014, 19-year-old Brendan Tevlin was returning from college in a Jeep Liberty to his family when he was approached by three men at an intersection in West Orange, New Jersey. While one man stayed in his car, Brown and Jeremy Villagran surrounded Tevlin's car as Brown opened fire into the closed passenger window 10 times and striking Tevlin eight times. Brown pushed the body onto the passenger seat floor and drove to an apartment complex about about a mile away, and stole some personal items.

Four days later, Brown is believed to have tried to steal a car from a man at gunpoint, but could not drive a stickshift, so he fled. At a nearby convenience store, he changed clothes, and is seen with his head and face on a security video covered by a checkered keffiyeh head scarf. On July 18, the fugitive was arrested in New Jersey found camping in the woods in a lean-to shelter, along with a notebook on how to carry on warfare and evade authorities. Brown and 3 others pleaded not guilty to the murders of Tevlin and recent high school graduate and cheerleader Cheyanne Bond on August 6.

By August 20, 2014, Brown had been charged with two murders in Seattle and a third in New Jersey, and King County prosecutors filed with an additional count of aggravated murder charges for the slaying in Skyway. According to charging documents, Brown claimed to be a Muslim and a jihadi who believed his actions were“just kills,” or justified shootings of adult males in retaliation for actions by the U.S. government in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan as he stated to authorities:

“All these lives are taken every single day by America, by this government. So a life for a life,”

The case received very little publicity outside of local media in Seattle and New Jersey, and conservative news outlets and blogs until September 16, when CNN published a story on the case.