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Maryland Mall Shooter: Tea Party Extremist? No — Teen Skateboarder

Posted on | January 27, 2014 | 78 Comments

Darion Marcus Aguilar, 19, has been named as the gunman who killed two people Saturday at the Columbia mall near Baltimore:

Why Darion Marcus Aguilar shot two people to death and then killed himself is still a mystery to police. They’re investigating who the 19-year-old man was and whether he even knew the people he shot Saturday.
“I know there’s a lot of interest in the motive for this, and I have as much interest in that as anybody,” Howard County Police Chief Bill McMahon told reporters Sunday.
He said there was still no known relationship between the shooter and his victims, though he did not rule out the possibility that there was one.
Police said that Aguilar showed up at The Mall in Columbia in a taxi and stayed in a “generally confined area” before going to Zumiez, a shop that caters to skaters, on the second floor.
There he fired six to nine shots, killing 21-year-old Brianna Benlolo and 25-year-old Tyler Johnson before turning the shotgun on himself.

The Daily Mail has more background:

Howard County detectives have seized a diary from the home of Aguilar which expressed unhappiness with his life.
The Prince George’s County Police Department said it received a missing persons report for Aguilar at about 1:40 p.m. Saturday, more than two hours after the mall shooting. Officers went to Aguilar’s home to speak with his mother about 5 p.m. and saw Aguilar’s journal. The portion the officer read made him concerned for Aguilar’s safety, the department said.
Police began tracking Aguilar’s phone and soon discovered it was at the mall.
Howard County Police Chief William McMahon said the journal expressed general unhappiness, but he did not give any specifics about the writings. . . .
His dumbfounded mother described him as ‘a gentle, sweet kid’ who has never been interested in guns. . . .
‘If you were to go in his room you would see what a gentle sweet kid he was,’ she said, adding that he was a vegetarian because he was concerned about animal welfare.
‘I don’t know what happened, I really don’t. It’s so unusual, you can talk to any of his friends and find out what a gentle person he was.
‘I don’t know, he’s never had a gun before, never been interested in guns or anything like that. I just don’t know what happened, I just don’t know what happened.’
The woman, who didn’t give her name, told reporters she didn’t believe her son knew his victims, contradicting earlier local radio reports that he had dated Benlolo. . . .
His friend, Ellis Cropper, told ABC News that Aguilar worked at a local Dunkin Donuts where he’d just got a promotion and was planning on enrolling in college.
‘Darion was a good kid,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what happened … Darion is quiet, kept to himself. Nice, normal, calm demeanor.’ . . .
Aguilar graduated in 2013 from James Hubert Blake High School in Silver Spring, said Dana Tofig, a Montgomery County schools spokesman.
A person who attended the high school with Aguilar told The Associated Press that he was an avid skateboarder. . . .
Benlolo’s grandfather, John Feins, said in a telephone interview from Florida that his granddaughter had a two-year-old son and that the job at Zumiez was her first since she went back to work after her son’s birth.
‘She was all excited because she was the manager there,’ he said.
He said he had spoken with his daughter, Brianna’s mother, earlier in the day, but didn’t know who the gunman was or whether the person knew his granddaughter.
‘It’s senseless. It’s totally, totally senseless,’ he said.
He described his daughter’s family as a military family that had moved frequently and had been in Colorado before moving to Maryland about two years ago.

To summarize: This was a senseless crime committed by someone with no discernible political motive, but who was definitely not a right-wing Tea Party extremist, and therefore liberals will quickly forget it, except to use it as a statistic to advocate gun control, despite the fact that (a) Maryland has fairly strict laws that limit concealed carry, and (b) the shooter used a shotgun, the very weapon recommended by Vice President Joe Biden.

UPDATE: Pat Dollard noticed this quote buried wwaaayy down deep in a Washington Post article:

But the news did not entirely shock another Blake classmate, Aaron Gayadeen.
“He was always a little bit crazy,” Gayadeen said through Facebook messages. “To be honest I am a little in shock that it was him but I’m not too surprised. .?.?. He would always talk about what it would be like to stab someone but he would always gimme a weird look then laugh and say ‘just kidding.’?”
Gayadeen said Aguilar would make these remarks in jest during spare time in a pre-engineering class, an elective they took to graduate. “He would be like, ‘I wonder what it feels like to stab someone. A knife piercing thru someone’s skin.’?”

Professor Donald Douglas gets straight to the point:

Well, this doesn’t fit the far-right tea party Second Amendment profile.
A black dude with an Hispanic surname.

 

Category: Crime, Maryland

Comments

78 Responses to “Maryland Mall Shooter: Tea Party Extremist? No — Teen Skateboarder”

  1. Federale
    January 27th, 2014 @ 2:26 pm

    Where is Reverends Al and Jesse? Black Hispanic doesn’t fit the racial justice profile? There is a race war going on and whites are the victims.

  2. Sunlit Web
    January 27th, 2014 @ 3:32 pm

    That’s what I think too. But saying that makes me seem a bit creepy. I noticed the press isn’t picking up the comments of this girl much. She said he talked about wanting to know what it would be like to cut human flesh”. Even as a joke that is a huge red flag in my book. The creepiness factor is on high. Maybe women will catch that better than men will. I don’t know…

  3. sarah wells
    January 27th, 2014 @ 3:44 pm

    That’s true, but allowing for rational motivations of jealousy or revenge, I think this kid was literally diseased. He’d been ruminating aloud about random homicide for some time, based on the statement of his acquaintance.

  4. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 27th, 2014 @ 4:58 pm

    I am going to guess you are a Democrat trying to paint conservatives as racists.

    I do not care that Barack Obama’s parentage (from a genetic viewpoint). I do not like President Obama as President because his policy positions are bad for the country.

  5. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 27th, 2014 @ 4:59 pm

    To paraphrase Billy Joel: You may be right. He may be crazy.

  6. Australia Has Shark Troubles | Regular Right Guy
    January 27th, 2014 @ 5:10 pm

    […] Maryland Mall Shooter: Tea Party Extremist? No — Teen Skateboarder […]

  7. Socialism: Organized Evil
    January 27th, 2014 @ 5:13 pm

    While I realize that this can be an uncomfortable topic, it is true that Thomas Jefferson’s observations led him to draw the same conclusions I’ve drawn.

    In Query 14 of Notes on the State of Virginia, in particular. Online, here:

    http://books.google.com/books?id=DTWttRSMtbYC&pg=PA149#v=onepage&q&f=false

    Were Jefferson’s conclusions incorrect?

  8. God Bless Texa
    January 27th, 2014 @ 5:38 pm

    Just because they cannot find a relationship – doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Don’t know if it was a “lovers triangle” but whenever I see something like this it sounds like it.

    Of course, I see it as another poster-child for concealed carry permits being allowed for every law-abiding citizen. There was someone that pulled out an AK in OKC and fired into the air. He was dropped by two different citizens when a third yelled for him to drop it and he leveled on him.

    That is what every state should emulate – I see this as just another example of what an unarmed populace gives rise to, and what a well-armed populace can prevent.

  9. Kevin O'Kelley
    January 27th, 2014 @ 5:57 pm

    It’s winter: he could easily carry it under his coat.

  10. Art Deco
    January 27th, 2014 @ 6:42 pm

    I think if they had that kind of association, it would be public by now, but perhaps not…

  11. Art Deco
    January 27th, 2014 @ 6:42 pm

    Not the same guy.

  12. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 27th, 2014 @ 6:56 pm

    Short Answer: Yes.

  13. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 27th, 2014 @ 6:58 pm

    http://batshitcrazynews.com/2014/01/motive-for-maryland-mall-shotgun-shooting-still-unknown/

    And specifically: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2545893/Three-dead-gunman-opens-fire-suburban-Baltimore-mall-food-court.html

  14. K-Bob
    January 27th, 2014 @ 7:08 pm

    Absolutely.

    Only leftists care about skin color.

  15. K-Bob
    January 27th, 2014 @ 7:21 pm

    A spamming moby. Gosh, who’d ever think to try that?

    Only leftists care about skin color

  16. Socialism: Organized Evil
    January 27th, 2014 @ 7:25 pm

    Thomas Jefferson had a lot to say about it in Query 14 of Notes on the State of Virginia. Online, here:

    http://books.google.com/books?id=DTWttRSMtbYC&pg=PA149#v=onepage&q&f=false

    Which of Jefferson’s conclusions do you dispute?

  17. CPAguy
    January 27th, 2014 @ 9:59 pm

    smh…..come on, man (mamn)…

  18. richard mcenroe
    January 27th, 2014 @ 11:26 pm

    I’ve always found it amusing that Obama has more in common genetically with the people who SOLD blacks to whites than he does with blacks themselves, but that doesn’t mean I will tar every person of mixed race ancestry with the broad but shallow brush of Barack Obama,

  19. Adjoran
    January 28th, 2014 @ 2:16 am

    Typical. Not a word about vegetable welfare.

  20. Adjoran
    January 28th, 2014 @ 2:20 am

    We haven’t lost the ability. People spotted the insanity in Lanza, and Loughner, and the Aurora shooter.

    We still have the ability to spot them. We have lost the will to act when we do.

  21. Adjoran
    January 28th, 2014 @ 2:22 am

    Obama was mixed of race, but he was pure commie on both sides.

  22. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 28th, 2014 @ 3:19 am

    Third world half baked commie on Dad’s side, Self hatin’ radical self absorbed commie on Mom’s side. Nature and nurture (I go with nurture)…take your pick.

  23. SDN
    January 28th, 2014 @ 8:32 am

    I’ve heard the screams of the vegetables…

  24. La Pucelle
    January 28th, 2014 @ 10:02 am

    It’s well-documented historical fact. Not just Hitler, but many of the high-ranking officers were also major animal welfare proponents. It’s easy to find photographs of them petting dogs or with kittens or birds perched on their shoulders. (A brain break if ever there was one) One particularly famous photograph features Hitler tenderly feeding a fawn. And one of the first acts the Nazi Party took once they were in power was to ban the (admittedly horrific) practice of vivisection.

    It’s sometimes hard to believe that these same people were responsible for the torture and death of millions. But it also shows us a murderous psychopathy that couldn’t extend that compassion to people. It also shows that this kind of psychopathy is not as uncommon as we’d like to think.

  25. Matt_SE
    January 28th, 2014 @ 2:58 pm

    Is veganism proof of mental disorder?
    The evidence seems to be mounting…

  26. Matt_SE
    January 28th, 2014 @ 2:58 pm

    Is veganism proof of mental disorder?
    The evidence seems to be mounting…

  27. Art Deco
    January 28th, 2014 @ 5:18 pm

    No, and the police were explicit that they would have expected to have found an association at this point. Handsome young women seldom settle for the generically pleasant young man, and generically pleasant described him up until he started pumping buckshot into people.

  28. Art Deco
    January 28th, 2014 @ 9:44 pm

    Almost certainly misreported.