A man claiming to be a jihadist, who was charged in the shooting and killing two men in Seattle, Washington, and the murder of a young college student in New Jersey in June, was officially charged on Wednesday with shooting a 30-year-old man to death in Seattle’s Skyway area in April 2014. He reportedly admitted to police detectives that the four killings were revenge for the United State government’s activities in the Middle East.
The suspect, Ali Muhammad Brown, allegedly told investigators and the prosecutor is that his actions were justified and that he was retaliating for the deaths of his brother jihadists at the hands of U.S. soldiers and law enforcement agents, according to a police detective, Morris Hempner, who is following the terrorism case. Brown is also a registered sex offender, according to theEssex County, New Jersey, Prosecutor’s Office.
The 29-year-old American-born suspect was charged at his arraignment on Wednesday with first-degree murder by the King County, Washington, Prosecutor’s Office for the the shooting death of 30-year-old Leroy Henderson on April 27, 2014. Police said Henderson was shot with a 9mm semiautomatic handgun 10 times in the back as he was walking towards his home.
The self-styled jihadist was charged earlier with first-degree murder for shooting and killing Ahmed Said and Dwone Anderson-Young in Seattle on June 1, 2014. In addition, Ali Muhammad Brown is suspected of killing a 19-year-old college student, Brendan Tevlin, in Newark, New Jersey, on June 25, after Brown traveled from Seattle to New Jersey to evade a police arrest warrant. All four victims were allegedly killed by multiple gunshots from the same 9mm handgun.
According to the Seattle Mayor’s Office, King County detectives said it was surveillance video in Skyway showing a sports utility vehicle that Brown was using at the time coupled with the multiple 9mm cartridge casings found at the Henderson murder crime scene that led them to homegrown jihadist.
In court documents, police said Brown confessed to all four murders. “The one in King County on the 28th, the two in Seattle on June 1st, and the one in [Essex County] New Jersey, on June 25th?” a detective asked.
“All of it,” Brown allegedly replied, according to court papers.
“Those four murders that we’re talking about were all done for vengeance for the actions of the United States in the Middle East?” the detective asked. “Yes,” Brown allegedly replied.
A registered sex offender and a suspect in two Seattle homicides, Ali Muhammad Brown, 29, of Seattle, Washington, has been charged with murder, felony murder, robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and unlawful possession of a weapon.
In a statement Brown made to detectives in Essex County, New Jersey, Prosecutor’s office, Brown allegedly claimed the teenaged Tevlin was from his perspective a justified killing” and said he defined a “just kill” as targeting only adult men, not women, children or senior citizens.
“My mission is vengeance. For the lives, millions of lives are lost every day,” he reportedly said. “Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, all these places where innocent lives are being taken every single day … All these lives are taken every single day by America, by this government. So a life for a life.”
