The ex-wife of the man suspected of murdering three Muslim students Tuesday near the University of North Carolina described him as a person with “no compassion” who was obsessed with a movie about a shooting rampage.
Cynthia Hurley, who said she and Craig Stephen Hicks divorced 17 years ago, told the Associated Press that she had always been disturbed by Hicks’ fixation on the 1993 film “Falling Down.” The movie, which stars Michael Douglas, follows an engineer struggling with unemployment and divorce as he goes on a shooting rampage through Los Angeles.
“That always freaked me out,” Hurley told the AP. “He watched it incessantly. He thought it was hilarious. He had no compassion at all.”
Hicks, 46, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder for allegedly shooting the three victims to death. The victims were identified as Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23; Barakat’s wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21; and Abu-Salha’s sister Razan, 19.
Chapel Hill, North Carolina police suggested that a long-running parking dispute between Hicks and his neighbors may have been a factor in the shooting but did not otherwise offer a clear motive for the crime. Officials said they were investigating the possibility of a hate crime.
A Facebook page that appeared to belong to Hicks showed that he identified as an “anti-theist” who often criticized Christianity and Islam alike. He also expressed a strong interest in gun rights and posted a photo of a .38 revolver a few weeks before the shooting.
Hicks’ current wife, Karen Diane Haggerty, described her husband after the shooting as a champion of the rights of gays and minorities.
“This incident had nothing to do with religion or the victims’ faith but was related to a longstanding parking dispute that my husband had with the neighbors,” she told reporters, as quoted by USA Today.
I’m really enjoying the media quoting this guy’s ex-wife because…“research”. Yeah, I mean, where can a reporter go to find information on a guy’s current views if not his ex-wife from 17 years ago? Stewart called it, the biggest problem with modern media is their laziness.
To me there is one and only bit of good in this story. And that is this POS is still alive and in custody.
Speaking of “anti-theist”, has anyone confronted Bill Maher to get his take on all this? I tend to be someone who agrees with the more cynical views of organized religion, but he’s always struck me as going a bridge too far with it. As much as I think religion has been and continues to be used as an excuse for violence, his recent screeds about Islam being a violence problem (as opposed to having a violence problem I suppose, if you get the distinction I’m trying to make) struck me as offensive, over the top and lacking the usual nuance he’s able to muster. Now here we have what might be a great example of an extremist who used his rabid, anti-religion views as part of his justification for an heinous act of violence…potentially really highlighting that the problem is extremism, not religion per se, albeit true that religious beliefs (or perhaps I should say “beliefs about religion” because I include those of the “anti-theist”) tend to be extremely fertile ground for extremism…and I’d like to hear what Maher has to say about it, whether he’s man enough to admit he was going too far and acting hamfisted with his previous arguments and can engage in some introspection in light of this incident.
I came across an interesting passage in a book I’m reading. It’s a tad lengthy but worth sharing.
Re-watch “All the President’s Men” sometime. The sheer amount of work those guys put in trying to track down very basic information–who was on the Committee to Reelect the President?–is staggering. Information that, today, you’d find proudly linked to on the inevitable website, and they’re flying all over the country, meeting anonymous sources, exploiting co-workers’ ex-relationships.
When facts were hard to gather, they were valued and sought out. Now, when they’re mostly cheap and easy to come by, they’re held in contempt and ignored and treated as fungible “content,” stuff to fill up the space between advertisements and any “fact” is as good as any other at doing that.
And the Woodward and Bernstein of today, as compared to their younger selves, are the most perfect possible exemplars of that degenerative process.