Robbery My Rear End, The Tinley Park Killer Was There For Something Else

On February 2, 2008, a man entered the Lane Bryant store in Tinley Park where Harlem Avenue (IL-43) meets Interstate 80. He killed five of the women in the store, and left one survivor, who police believe, he also intended to kill. They called it an attempted armed robbery gone wrong. I don't think robbery was the motive.

If armed robbery had been the motive, there are several better prospects for quick cash at that interchange. There are several gas stations, convenience stores, and fast food resturants there with easy cash on hand, and lot of it in the tills. So why pick a Lane Bryant, a clothing store where most purchases are made via credit cards?

I am proposing an ulterior motive based upon the killer's looks in the sketch, the place he chose to do his crime, and the victims.

1. Since there are better prospects for quick cash via armed robbery, armed robbery and a botched robbery attempt seems not to be the motive.
2. The store he chose is a women's clothing store where there are unlikely to be any men.
3. All six victims were women.
4. He had each of them tied up in the backroom and he shot them execution style to make sure they were dead.
5. There was a police squad car in the parking lot. The squad responded to the shooting at the store because of the 9-1-1 call placed by the store's manager, not to any shots fired. I find it very odd that no one ever reported any gunshots. I suspect he was using a silencer on his weapon. What armed robber uses a silencer?
6. The sketch of the gunman shows him wearing a skullcap and a braid. To me, he appears to be stereotypical Nation of Islam. Whether he is or isn't is up for debate, but stereotypes exist for a reason.

Due to all of these, I suspect the shooting at the Lane Bryant were not motivated by robbery, but by something else, possibly sudden jihad syndrome (SJS). SJS seems a likely motivation here due to the target chosen, the victims chosen, and the way it was performed. This was done to instill terror, not to rob the store. Again, as in the NIU shooting, there is not concrete evidence, but many of the signs seem to point in that direction.

Was the NIU Shooter a muslim with SJS?

It's been too long again for posting, but I plan on doing expose`s here rather than reporting. Too many people do reporting already.

It's been a little over a week since Steve Kazmierczak stepped onto the stage in Cole Hall at Northern Illinois University and killed five before committing suicide. Debbie Schlussel suggests that he may have have been a muslim committing SJS or Sudden Jihad Syndrome. I think I concur with her.

There were several things that stuck out as the incident being SJS, but they did not reveal themselves to me until the Chicago SunTimes published an article by a close friend of his Rasmieyh Abdelnabi. Here's the quick rundown of why it could be a case of SJS:

1. Steve Kazmierczak studied Arabic and became rather fluent in it. This in of and by itself means nothing, but his close friend was a religious muslim. According to Bruce Keegan, Rasmieyh Abdelnabi was known for writing pro-Hamas/anti-Israel artices in the paper.
2. He seemed to shoot mostly at the women in the class. Of the deaths, four were women, and one was a man protecting his girlfriend. I'd like to see a breakdown by gender of the injured. I suspect it will be overwhelmingly female.
3. He premeditated the entire event. He deliberately purchased guns for the event. Good guns too, that would not jam on him. He also erased any trace the police and FBI could use to figure out his motive.
4. His association with Rasmieyh Abdelnabi, his religous muslim friend is potentially the biggest clue we have. The mosque she goes to seems to yearn for the "early glorious days of Islam". It is unknown if he went to the mosque.
5. His radical muslim friend also mentions in the SunTimes article that he had come around on his opinions about Hamas while sidestepping what those opinions might be. Given that she is a religious muslim, I suspect he came around to favoring Hamas.
6. He was a sociology major who specialized in religion in prisons. The largest growing religion in prisons is Islam. He at least had an interest in it, if not embraced it.

In addition, Derrick Shareef, the guy who attempted to bomb and shoot up the CherryVale Mall in Rockford was a jihadi from DeKalb County. He hailed from Genoa, but attended the Islamic Society of Illinois Northern University Mosque. The same mosque Rasmieyh Abdelnabi belongs to.

Given this, I suspect, but cannot prove that the NIU shooting is a case of SJS. However, it is an angle that should be pursued. I suspect it will yield more clues than any other angle on this incident. Everything here is circumstantial, and could be wrong, but I suspect they might be right.

To the five deceased, rest in peace with God.