Tag: murder
Jesse Watters

Fox Guest Ranting About Migrant Crime Has His Own Violent Rap Sheet

On February 28, Fox News host Jesse Watters hosted “James Lee” on his show to discuss the murder of Laken Riley on the campus of the University of Georgia. Watters did not disclose, however, that Lee is actually James DePaola, who has had multiple run-ins with the law himself, including when he became violent over a grilled cheese sandwich his wife had made, prompting his 12-year-old daughter to call the police.

On February 28, Athens-Clarke County Mayor Kelly Girtz held a press conference. The Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreported that the press conference had been interrupted multiple times by protesters, including James DePaola.

Law-enforcement officers did not remove anybody from the room while Girtz spoke, but police asked Athens resident James DePaola several times to wait his turn to speak.

“We the people are tired of this lawlessness,” Depaola told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution after the press conference ended. “We are being put last.”

DePaola also spoke to Flagpole.com at the press conference.

Later that day, Watters hosted “James Lee” on his show and played footage of DePaola interrupting the press conference, praising him for his actions. (Watters’ full “migrant crime spree” segment can be viewed here. Watters likens his guest to Rick Santelli's rantin 2009 that kicked off the tea party. His guest concludes by telling Watters that “You don't get the credit you deserve as a patriot and a real journalist.”)

He can also be seen shortly before the four-minute mark in a video of the press conference posted by NBC News, when the camera pans away from the lectern.

James Lee certainly appears to be James DePaola, as others have begun to notice.

The Georgia Gazettehas a picture of a “James Lee DePaola” related to a 2023 booking at Whitfield County jail. The picture appears to be the same man.

The site also has a booking picture from a 2020 booking in Gwinnett county.

But before advising Fox News on immigration policy, DePaola was previously best known for violently threatening his wife after deciding that she had used too many slices of cheese on his grilled cheese sandwich, leading to his young daughter calling the police. As Time reported in 2016:

A man wanted just two slices of cheese on his sandwich, so when his wife used three slices in his grilled cheese sandwich, he became irate.

Angered at the sight of all the extra cheesiness, James DePaola became agitated and violent, yelling at the woman, Michele DePaola. According to WSB-TV, DePaola then ripped the landline out of the wall so his wife couldn’t call the police and reportedly screamed at her intensely. The couple’s 12-year old daughter who witnessed the incident called the police to the scene, according to Athens-Clarke County police.

James DePaola was charged with obstruction of a 911 call and criminal trespass/damage to property over what the police now refer to as “the grilled cheese incident”. DePaola has a history of “abusive behavior,” and was often “excessively critical and controlling of day to day things in life” like sandwiches, apparently.

Fox5 Atlanta posted a booking picture of DePaola at the time, making clear he is from Athens-Clarke County; the site also mentioned that two of his other young children were present when he threatened his wife.

While this may be Jesse Watters’ ideal guest, we cannot recommend that news outlets take public policy advice from someone violently triggered by an unexpected slice of cheese.

The real question is why Fox News didn’t tell its audience DePaola’s full name.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Greg Abbott

Abbott's Pardon Candidate Premeditated His 'Self-Defense' Murder Spree

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is planning to pardon Daniel Perry, the man convicted of murder for killing a Black Lives Matter protester at a rally in Austin in July 2020. Abbott is citing a “Stand Your Ground” law after Perry ran a red light and accelerated his car onto a street filled with protesters, then shot Garrett Foster, a protester who approached the car while openly carrying an AK-47. That Abbott wants to make Perry into a cause célèbre, given the bare facts of the case, is bad enough, but on Thursday, the Houston Chronicle released a 76-page filing by Travis County prosecutors that should really make Abbott think again, but probably won’t.

The filing includes page after page of social media posts and private messages filled with racism, violent imagery, and, tellingly, a strong preoccupation with exactly what counts as murder when it comes to killing protesters. The man did research on what he might be able to get away with—a search for “degrees of murder charges,” web history looking at Wikipedia on murder in United States law, a status posted about the distinctions between different degrees of murder and manslaughter, discussions of people who drove into crowds of protesters. Daniel Perry didn’t just happen to drive onto a street with protesters and then shoot and kill one of them. This was something he’d thought about a lot.

On May 31, 2020, Perry shows how he is thinking this through:

DANIEL PERRY: “I might have to kill a few people on my way to work they are rioting outside my apartment complex.”

JUSTIN SMITH: “Can you legally do so?”

DANIEL PERRY: “If they attack me or try to pull me out my car then yes.”

DANIEL PERRY: “If I just do it because I am driving by then no.”

So that’s the first question for Greg Abbott: Do you want to pardon the guy who not only murdered someone, but murdered someone after doing his research on different types of murder charges and showing a preoccupation with driving into crowds of protesters?

The second question for Abbott would probably involve some of the more overtly racist things Perry said and shared. Just one with the n-word, apparently, but you don’t need to use that word to be unbelievably racist, like when Perry shared “a meme with a photo of a woman holding her child’s head under the bath water and the text reads, ‘WHEN YOUR DAUGHTERS FIRST CRUSH IS A LITTLE NEGRO BOY.’”

Perry also compared Black Lives Matter protesters to monkeys at the zoo and said, speaking for himself, not sharing a meme, “To bad we can’t get paid for hunting Muslims in Europe.” How about that, Gov. Abbott? Still can’t wait to pardon him?

But that’s not all prosecutors want on the record about what Perry was up to online. They also have him searching for “good chats to meet young girls” and messaging with multiple underage girls, with the strong implication that he had a sexual relationship with one too young to have her driver’s license. This is the guy Greg Abbott wants to make into a heroic martyr of the right.

There are also some messages exchanged that you really want more context on, like this one:

OUTGOING MESSAGE: “He is now saying they threaten him.

”JUSTIN SMITH: “Probably. Sounds like he got kidnapped.”

OUTGOING MESSAGE: “Look just fix it.”

JUSTIN SMITH: “Literally how.”

OUTGOING MESSAGE: “By ensuring this never happens again contacting me and my father if he contacts you.”

JUSTIN SMITH: “I’m sorry.”

OUTGOING MESSAGE: “And tell me if the money shows up.”

That exchange goes on from there, concluding:

OUTGOING MESSAGE: “I am legally not allowed to talk about said issue anymore.”

OUTGOING MESSAGE: “I will hit you up on the DL.”

Daniel Perry was obsessed with protests, especially protests for racial justice. He was specifically interested in when it was permissible to kill protesters. He was also sharing racist memes, saying his own personal racist stuff, and hitting on teenage girls. This guy is a real prince. And Abbott isn’t the only Republican who has defended him:


Maybe Republicans will back away from Perry a little bit following the revelations in this filing, with their racism and obsession with teenage girls and evidence of premeditation. But that’s not a given. And even if they back away now, they were willing to go with him right up to murder. This is where we are right now: Major politicians in one of the major parties support murderers if the murderer is on their side politically and the victim was on the other side. It’s hard to see how you come back from that.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

White Supremacist Who Traveled to New York to Murder Black Men Followed Extremist Racist On-Line Groups Who Support Trump

White Supremacist Who Traveled to New York to Murder Black Men Followed Extremist Racist On-Line Groups Who Support Trump

 

Reprinted with permission fromAlternet.

A white supremacist who traveled to New York City to kill black men subscribed to numerous neo-Nazi, anti-feminist and far-right conspiracy theory channels on YouTube, according to what appears to be his personal account on the website.

James Harris Jackson stabbed a black man with a sword on the street in Manhattan on Wednesday, March 22, in what he admitted to police was an intentional hate crime. Jackson, who is from Maryland, told police he is a member of a white supremacist hate group.

Jackson had traveled to New York with plans to kill black men in relationships with white women, but wound up targeting a homeless man in an act of terrorism. Jackson says he carried out the attack to “send a message” and claims he’s written a racist manifesto.

On what appears to be Jackson’s personal YouTube account, he subscribed to a variety of fascist YouTube channels, many of which support President Donald Trump and other far-right leaders and circulate anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. His subscription list is a who’s who of alt-right figures, including Alex Jones, Stefan Molyneux, Paul Ray Ramsey and many more.

YouTube page of white supremacist terrorist James Harris Jackson

Jackson subscribed to the channel for the National Policy Institute and Radix. The former is the white supremacist organization founded by neo-Nazi Richard Spencer (who led a “Hail Trump” chant at a white supremacist conference last year), and the latter is the fascist journal Spencer publishes.

Openly neo-Nazi channels Jackson subscribed to include Cybernazi, Politically Incorrect and Esoteric Truths. He also frequented many racist, anti-Semitic, white nationalist and anti-feminist channels.

Jackson did not upload any videos onto his channel, but he did recently favorite racist videos, including two titled, “Is It Time For Whites To Start Voicing Their Displeasure With Black On White Crimes?” and “Blacks Know That Blacks Are Violent So Why Does The White Media Pretend They Are Not?”

YouTube subscriptions of white supremacist terrorist James Harris Jackson

The channel was uncovered by Internet detective @HenryKrinkIe, a leftist Twitter user who hunts Nazis. KrinkIe previously uncovered the white supremacist website and manifesto left by neo-Nazi Dylann Roof, who massacred nine people at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina in hopes of starting a “race war.” Roof said in his manifesto that he was radicalized by far-right white supremacist websites.

Krinkle was able to uncover Jackson’s YouTube channel through some master sleuth work.

Media reports noted that Jackson served in the U.S. Army for four years and was deployed to Afghanistan. Using this information, he was able to track down his LinkedIn profile, where Jackson included a copy of his résumé, which has his email address. When one searches this email on Google, only one result comes up: a Russian hacking website which posted the personal information of video game players. The webpage showed that Jackson played the video game “Assassin’s Creed II” on PC, and used barris417 for his username. Type in barris417 on YouTube and an account with the name James Jackson pops up.

This attack is part of a massive surge in hate crimes in the past year, with the rise of far-right politicians like Donald Trump. In January, white gunman Alexandre Bissonnette massacred Muslims praying at a mosque in Quebec, Canada. His social media accounts and testimonies from classmates showed Bissonnette was a white nationalist, anti-feminist and staunch supporter of Trump, Marine Le Pen and other far-right demagogues.

This article was made possible by the readers and supporters of AlterNet.

Suspect In Fatal Shooting At Mississippi Campus Kills Himself

Suspect In Fatal Shooting At Mississippi Campus Kills Himself

(Reuters) – A man suspected of gunning down a Mississippi college professor in his campus office and of killing a woman died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a day-long manhunt, authorities said on Tuesday.

Shannon Lamb, a social science instructor at Delta State University, killed himself after being cornered by Greenville police as they tried to initiate a traffic stop, Cleveland Police Chief Charles “Buster” Bingham told a news conference.

Lamb was being sought for the Monday killing of Ethan Schmidt, an assistant professor of American history at Delta State, and the earlier shooting of Amy Prentiss in Gautier, a town 300 miles (480 km) away, authorities have said.

Lamb and Prentiss shared a home.

The Cleveland, Mississippi killing of Schmidt followed similar incidents on U.S. college campuses in recent weeks, including at Sacramento City College in California, Texas Southern University and Georgia’s Savannah State University.

Law enforcement said when police stopped his car, Lamb jumped from the vehicle and ran. Officers who gave chase then heard a gunshot.

Bingham said motives were still being sought in both killings. “We don’t know why this man did what he did,” he said.

The shooting left students and staff at the school on edge for several hours as police locked down the campus and searched buildings following reports of active gunfire.

Delta State officials said no students were injured in the shooting in Jobe Hall, home to the university’s division of social sciences and history.

Delta State University President William LaForge said Lamb was teaching two courses during the fall semester and did not want a full load, citing medical issues.

He praised Schmidt as a “star” professor.

(Reporting by Victoria Cavaliere; Editing by Catherine Evans)

Photo: Shannon Lamb is shown in this handout photo provided by the Gautier Police Department in Jackson, Mississippi, September 14, 2015. (REUTERS/Gautier Police Department/Handout via Reuters)