Were the Brown victims targeted?
Authorities are now saying that Benjamin Erickson was not the killer, and we don’t know who was:
[Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha] said that there was only “some degree of evidence” that led them to Erickson, but said their investigation “now points in a different direction.”
“I think it’s fair to say that there’s no basis to consider him a person of interest, and that’s why he’s being released. We still have a lot of steps to take in this case,” he added.
The authorities never gave out his name officially, but it was leaked.
I’ve seen a lot of online chatter about how long it’s taking to find the killer, and how incompetent the authorities are. That seems pretty impatient to me. Erickson was fingered as a person of interest through cellphone data and that sort of thing, but I’m going to assume that all the witnesses are being interviewed, more data is being crunched, and an arrest will emerge. It’s early yet, and life is not a CSI TV show.
It is reported that the murderer yelled something, and a lot of people seem to think that of course it was something Islamist and this is being covered up. Perhaps; it’s certainly possible. But I’ve read it was “something unintelligible,” which is possible as well.
This lovely young woman is one of the students who was murdered:
The first victim of the deadly school shooting at Brown University has been identified as a sophomore student and vice president of the school’s college Republican club, Ella Cook, according to her Alabama parish and a former classmate.
The news of Cook’s death was shared during a service at the Cathedral Church of the Advent in her hometown of Birmingham.
This is unusual; as with most Ivy League schools, active “out” Republicans are not all that common, and her role would have given her high visibility. Was she targeted for this? We haven’t a clue at this point.
Today they released the name of the second student who was murdered:
Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov was identified by the Uzbekistan Foreign Affairs Ministry on social media Monday as the second student who died in Saturday’s shooting at the Providence, Rhode Island university, according to NBC News. …
Umurzokov’s aunt also confirmed his death to NBC, telling the outlet that she found out the news when her nephew’s mother called her “in the middle of the night.
“He was very kind, smart. Attended talented and gifted schools,” Umurzokov’s aunt said, adding that he “wanted to be a neurosurgeon ’cause when he was 10 he had a very serious eight-hours-long brain surgery.”
“We hoped that he would have had a bright future,” the grieving aunt added, according to NBC.
Again: targeted, or random? RIP to both.
[NOTE: By the way, I have a lot more to say about the Bondi carnage. But not today.]
Saw the pictures of the victims on LI.
Very sad to see 2 young people shot down for nothing.
Heart can only go out to their families.
I don’t know why with all the surveillance a name isn’t out there. They can play hide the murder for so long.
A very sad day.
As neo writes on her first news read (I think) today, deaths by murder from Jhadi, in public, and in private.
O’Bloody Hell, where art thou?
My guess is that the name “Benjamin Erickson” was leaked out to give the immediate impression of a “white supremacist”/MAGA killer. That is the Left’s MO after all, make off the killer is right-wing and hope the lie makes it around the world, etc etc.
Many have pointed out that in today’s day and age, it’s suspicious that the best images we’ve been shown of the shooter are as clear as the first generations of camera phones. Even if the shooter was wearing a mask, you wonder if there was something people could identify about them in a clear image.
When the victims include “Republican club VP” and “immigrant”, my first guess is that the victims weren’t targeted for their politics. However, that doesn’t mean they weren’t targeted–after all, there is one demographic that seems to victimize young white girls and Asians with relatively high frequency (think NYC subway platforms) that the media and police will go above and beyond to protect. Likewise, the identity of a trans killer simply angry at the “normal” students around it would be hidden as long as possible as well.
Most of the time, it’s best to use at least the 48 hr rule. Just hope that the young man that was first fingered doesn’t have his life ruined.
Do the authorities know more and are waiting for concrete info? We just do not know.
Seems rather odd that even the TA teaching the class (who ‘made eye contact’ with him) declines to offer a description.
@Art Deco– We don’t know that the TA is “declining” to offer a description. We only know that the police have not released any information about that, as yet. They are in no way required to broadcast every step of their investigation, especially if making what information they have public enables the perpetrator to begin covering tracks he didn’t know he had been leaving. We have to let those who do this s**t for a living do their jobs.
As Neo said: this isn’t TV.
Not TV, a Leftists enclave where they control every bit of information coming in and out.
A neighbor once positively identified me at night from my posture and gait. Based on that personal experience I don’t think it will be long before someone fingers this guy.
https://www.nbcnews.com/video/new-video-released-in-search-for-brown-university-gunman-254470213753
The TA has been interviewed by a news outlet and gave an account of what happened from his vantage point.
Jesse Watters on Fox brings forth an idea that the apparent incompetence of PPD, the mayor of Providence, and the president of Brown, is all to protect the image of Brown. Given how left the government of Providence and Brown are, not surprising that’s a higher priority than solving the case.
Fox News had video today of a “person of interest” in the Brown U. case. He looked light-complected; that doesn’t necessarily make him “white”.
Dratch is new. Is he a leftist trol. Time will tell.
om:
Troll plus sock puppet.
— Shirehome
This. Oh so much this.
Whenever something horrible happens, I always try to convince everyone around me to WAIT. Wait. Wait for things to calm down. Wait for the initial round of speculation and garbage to process.
Remember the Aurora shooting, where the press rushed to finger a TEA party member on the basis of a very common name? Or the nonsense published about the Columbine shooters? Or the Epstein idiocy?
Wait.
It’s Rhode Island–Always first assume incompetence and corruption as an explanation before moving on to conspiracy.
A founder of the College Republicans group thinks Ella Cook was targeted for her activism. She was prominent on campus, handing out the conservative newspaper, but always very pleasant. He doesn’t have any evidence, however.
https://1819news.com/news/item/hunted-killed-in-cold-blood-mtn.-brook-native-ella-cook-targeted-for-conservative-beliefs-in-brown-university-killing-college-republicans-of-america-founder-says
J*F*M,
Yes, as a former near neighbor of RI, that’s definitely true. The Patriarcas long controlled the state, and the residue from such corruption is still there.
I grew up three blocks from where this happened and there certainly are not lot of Republicans at Brown. I have no idea if Cook was targeted because of her views but it sounds like she was a prominent figure on campus. And yes Providence is notoriously corrupt.
I suppose the “targeted” case could be made if the two decedents were hit, say, four times and the others maybe once.
Looks like they got him…
https://instapundit.com/762975/
Yes, the young Republican Club VP was targeted. Mark Helprin (sp?) says rhe FBI has reported this fact to the family’s survivors.
That’s a definite “maybe,” Barry. I remember Blaze News fingering a woman for the J6 pipe bombs based on body shape and gait. She produced a good alibi.
The X/Twitter page Barry Meislin links is mostly happy talk about a recent experience Mustapha Kharbouch had during a student internship at the International Crisis Group.
The two interesting bits are that the article refers to Kharbouch with they/their pronouns and this quote:
______________________________
As a Palestinian refugee who grew up witnessing the UN as a lifeline for my community, contributing directly to this was a deeply meaningful milestone in my professional journey.
–Mustapha Kharbouch ’27
The university immediately wiped his student page.
For some reason or other.
Privacy?
Probity?
Perversity?
In any event, this Chanuka thing seems to be driving
somecertain people over the edge.The Bee has already suggested, in a penetrating satire, that it be called off. (Christopher Hitchens, in one of his more contrarian episodes, expressed a heartfelt wish that the event on which the holiday is based had ended rather differently.)
huxley: “International Crisis Group”
The ICG is a notoriously anti-Zionist outfit, Robert Malley came out of there.
The point being that the goal is not to deal with crises or find a way to get through them or mitigate them or recover from them or even to solve them.
The point is to create them.
But I’m not really being fair here (OR truthful): THE “crisis” (in this case) is, in fact, how to solve the problem of the existence of the Zionist Entity along with those who support it or who might POTENTIALLY support it.
Genocide, anyone? (That is, GENUINE genocide….)
Was Charlie Kirk targeted? Incoceiv….
Error correction, edit function not working?
“Was Charler Kirk targeted?
Inconcei….” (Inconceivable!)
Skip on December 15, 2025 at 6:40 pm said:
“Not TV, a Leftists enclave where they control every bit of information coming in and out.”
And yet the news this evening highlights the interview by Susie Wiles with Vogue. And then she and the WH declaim the reported content as misrepresenting the bulk of the interview.
But why would she even think about going near such a liberal/progressive/leftist medium?
She is otherwise recognized as being very smart.
[At the very least, I hope she has her own copy of the interview content, just in case a libel suit is warranted.]