The Daily Collegian
Police:
By Stephen Singer
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
MANCHESTER, Conn. A
warehouse driver about to lose his
job after getting caught on video
stealing beer from the distributor
ship where he worked went on a
shooting rampage there Tuesday,
killing eight people before com
mitting suicide, authorities said.
At least two people were wound
ed. one critically, Manchester
police said. They were expected to
survive.
The gunman, a black man iden
tified by a company executive as
Omar Thornton, had complained
of racial harassment and said he
found a picture of a noose and a
racial epithet written on a bath
room wall, the mother of his girl
friend said. Her daughter told her
that Thornton’s supervisors told
him they'd talk to his co-workers.
But a union official said Thornton
had not filed a complaint of racism
to the union or any government
agency.
Thornton had been caught on
videotape stealing beer from
Hartford Distributors and was
supposed to meet with company
officials when the shootings
began. Teamsters official
Christopher Roos said.
“It's got nothing to do with
race." Roos said. “This is a dis
gruntled employee who shot a
bunch of people. "
James Battaglio, a spokesman
Panel OKs
Islam center
By Beth Fouhy and Karen Matthews
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERS
NEW YORK A city panel Uiesday
cleared the way for the construction near
ground zero of a mosque that has caused a
political uproar over religious freedom and
Sept. 11 even as opponents vowed to press
their case in court.
The Landmarks Preservation
Commission voted unanimously to deny
landmark status to a building two blocks
from the W'orld Trade Center site that
developers want to tear down and convert
into an Islamic community center and
mosque.
The panel said the 152-year-old lower
Manhattan building isn’t distinctive
enough to be considered a landmark.
The decision drew praise from Mayor
Michael Bloomberg, who stepped before
cameras on Governor’s Island with the
Statue of Liberty as a backdrop shortly
after the panel voted and called the
mosque project a key test of Americans’
commitment to religious freedom.
"The World Trade Center site will forev
er hold a special place in our city, in our
hearts.'' said Bloomberg, a Republican
turned independent. "But we would be
untrue to the best part of ourselves, and
who we are as New Yorkers and
Americans, if we said no to a mosque in
lower Manhattan."
The vote was a setback for opponents of
the mosque, who say it disrespects the
memory of those killed at the hands of
Islamic terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001. Jeers
and shouts of "Shame on you” could be
heard after the panel’s vote.
The American Center for Law and
Justice, a known conservative advocacy
group founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson,
announced it would challenge the panel’s
decision in state court Wednesday.
ACLJ attorney Brett Joshpe said the
group would file a petition alleging that the
landmarks panel “acted arbitrarily and
abused its discretion."
The proposed mosque has emerged as a
national political issue, with prominent
Republicans from former Alaska Gov.
Sarah Palin to former House Speaker
Newt Gingrich lining up against it.
The Anti-Defamation League, the
nation's most prominent Jewish civil rights
group, known for advocating religious free
dom, shocked many groups when it spoke
out against the mosque last week.
The League said building the Islamic
center “in the shadow of the World Trade
Center will cause some victims more pain
unnecessarily and that is not right.”
Bloomberg said Tuesday that denying
religious freedom to Muslims would play
into terrorists’ hands.
He said firefighters and other first
responders who died in the Sept. 11 attacks
had done so to protect the U.S.
Constitution.
"In rushing into those burning buildings,
not one asked, ‘What god do you pray to?
What beliefs do you hold?’” Bloomberg
Gunman kills eight in Conn.
for the families who own the dis
tributorship, said he had no imme
diate information about the allega
tions of racial harassment.
Thornton’s girlfriend had been
with him the night before the ram
page and had no indication he was
planning it, said her mother,
Joanne Hannah.
On lliesday morning, about 50
to 70 people were in the ware
house about 10 miles east of
Hartford during a shift change
when the gunman opened fire
around 7 a.m., said Brett
Hollander, whose family owns the
distributorship.
Adding to the chaos was a fire at
the warehouse that was put out.
Police did not know whether the
fire was related to the shootings.
After shooting his co-workers,
Thornton called his mother,
Hannah said.
“He wanted to say goodbye and
he loved everybody,” Hannah said.
A police sharpshooter had
approval to fire on Thornton when
he killed himself, an official with
knowledge of the scene told the
AP on condition of anonymity
because he was not authorized to
discuss it.
Hannah said her daughter
Kristi had dated Thornton for the
past eight years. She said he was
34 years old.
“Everybody’s got a breaking
point,” Joanne Hannah said. Kristi
Hannah did not return calls for
comment.
Seth Wenig/Associated Press
Mayor Bloomberg greets the crowd before
his speech.
said of the first responders. “We do not
honor their lives by denying the very con
stitutional rights they died protecting.”
Former Rep. Rick Lazio, a Republican
running for governor of New York, attend
ed the commission meeting with a handful
of opponents to the mosque, which is being
developed by a group called the Cordoba
Initiative.
“This is not about religion,” Lazio said.
“It’s about this particular mosque called
the Cordoba Mosque, it’s about it being at
ground zero, it’s about it being spearhead
ed by an imam who has associated himself
with radical Islamic causes and has made
comments that should chill every single
American, frankly.”
Lazio said the group’s imam, Feisal
Abdul Rauf, had refused to call the
Palestinian group Hamas a terrorist
organization.
Rauf also said in a “60 Minutes” inter
view televised shortly after Sept. 11 that
“United States policies were an accessory
to the crime that happened.”
The Cordoba Initiative says on its web
site that its goal is to foster a better rela
tionship between the Muslim world and
the West, “steering the world back to the
course of mutual recognition and respect
and away from heightened tensions.”
“We believe it will be a place where the
counter-momentum against extremism
will begin,” the imam’s wife, Daisy Khan,
told The Associated Press Friday. “We are
committed to peace.”
Khan told The Wall Street Journal that
the center’s board will include members of
other religions and will explore including
an interfaith chapel at the center.
The commission’s decision not to desig
nate the existing building as a landmark
means that the developers can tear it down
and start from scratch. If the building had
been declared a landmark, they could have
created a smaller mosque and community
center there. A partner in the project,
SoHo Properties, bought the property for
nearly $5 million. Early plans call for a 13-
story, $lOO million Islamic center. Cordoba
wants to transform the building into a
glass tower with a swimming pool, basket
ball court, auditorium and culinary school
besides the mosque.
The center, called Parksl, also would
have a library, art studios and meditation
rooms.
NATION
Hannah described Thornton as
an easygoing guy who liked to play
sports and video games. She said
he had a pistol permit and had
planned to teach her daughter
how to use a gun.
Thornton didn’t file any com
plaints against the company with
the Connecticut Commission on
Human Rights and Opportunities,
and there’s no record of any other
complaints against the firm, the
agency said Tuesday.
Hollander’s cousin, who’s a vice
president at the company, was
shot in the arm and the face.
Hollander said he thought his
cousin would be OK
“There was a guy that was sup
posed to, was asked to resign, to
come in to resign and chose not to
and shot my cousin and my co
workers,” Hollander said.
The Hartford Courant identified
another victim as Victor James,
59, of Windsor.
The rampage was the nation’s
deadliest since 13 people were
fatally shot at Fort Hood, Texas,
last November.
And in Connecticut, a state lot
tery worker gunned down four
supervisors in 1998 before com
mitting suicide, and six people
were killed in 1974 in botched rob
bery at a bakery in New Britain.
Two men were convicted of that
crime.
On Tuesday, a few dozen rela
tives and friends of the victims
gathered a few miles away at
BP begins ‘static kill’
ON THE GULF OF MEXICO BP
embarked Ihesday on an operation that
could seal the biggest offshore oil leak in
U.S. history once and for all, forcing mud
down the throat of its blown-out well in a
tactic known variously as “bullheading" or
a “static kill.”
The pressure in the well dropped quick
ly in the first 90 minutes of the procedure,
a sign that everything was going a.s
planned, wellsite leader Bobby Bolton told
The Associated Press aboard the Q4OOO.
the vessel being used to pump in the mud.
He said the work could be complete bv
Tuesday night or Wednesday, though BP
said the effort could continue through
Thursday, and engineers won t know for
more than a week if it choked the well for
good.
The 122 crew members on the Q4OOO
were excited about being part of what
could be the final resolution to a drama
that started with the April 20 explosion on
the offshore drilling rig Deepwater
Horizon, Capt. Keith Schultz said.
or Sat,
gene bottle
from Brita along with a copy
FALL 101 CoHegpan Magazine!
x% The Daily
Collegian
Employees console each other outside of Hartford Distributors in Conn,
Manchester High School. Outside,
people talked, hugged and cried.
Others talked on cell phones.
Police officers from numerous
agencies and police and fire vehi
cles surrounded the warehouse,
on a tree-lined road in an industri
al park just west of a shopping
mall.
The Hollander family is widely
respected in Manchester, said
state Rep. Ryan Barry, a lifelong
resident. He said the family
owned Hartford Distributors
sponsors local sports teams and
the family is civic-minded.
By Greg Bluestein and Harry R. Weber
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERS
“I'm a mariner and we lost mariners out
eVft emW tVifi
x# T
here. " said Schultz, who is on his second
28-day tour of duty since the spill started.
Tm very confident we ll be able to kill this
well. It's been one magical time trying to
get this thing plugged.”
A 75-ton cap placed on the well in July
has been keeping the oil bottled up inside
over the past three weeks, but that is con
sidered only a temporary measure. BP
and the Coast Guard want to plug up the
hole more securely with a column of heavy
drilling mud and cement.
The static kill involves slowly pumping
mud down lines running from a ship to the
top of the ruptured well a mile below. BP
said that may be enough by itself to seal
the well.
But retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad
Men, the government s point man for the
spill, made it clear that to be safe, the
gusher will have to be plugged up from two
directions.
He said the 18,000-foot relief well that
BP has been drilling over the past three
months will be used later this month to
execute a bottom kill," in which mud and
cement will be injected into the bedrock
2 : j miles below sea floor, which should ulti
mately plug up the well for good.
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“Everybody knows the
Hollanders as good, generous,
upstanding people,” Barry said.
“They’re embedded in the com
munity. Everyone knows Hartford
Distributors. They treat their
employees very well and they’re
part of the fabric of the town.”
In a statement, Connecticut
Gov. M. Jodi Rell offered condo
lences to the victims’ families and
co-workers.
“We are all left asking the same
questions: How could someone do
this? Why did they do this?” she
said.