The mall was closed, of course. More interesting, none of the evacuated shoppers were allowed to drive their vehicles home; school buses and other buses were brought in to take the shoppers home.
Backpacks with primitive IED's were found inside the mall. In fact, for many hours the police did not approach the shooter's body out of concerns that the body might be booby trapped. Who is Darion Marcus Aguilar? This photo, supposedly from Blake High School's yearbook, has surfaced:
Contrary to reports, Zumiez is more than a "skate store." Rrecently, the store's main display has been one of snowboarding, perhaps in advance of the Sochi Olympics. An eyewitness interviewed by CNN the afternoon of the murders stated, "The guy looked either Hispanic or Arab." I heard that interview myself when I was tuned into CNN so as to follow the events at Columbia Mall. CNN never replayed that interview, but continued to replay multiple times any interviews blaming the gun.
Over and over again, despite the police statements to the contrary, various news media kept labeling the slayings as "workplace violence" or "a relationship crime."
Was Darion Marcus Aguilar a jihadist? Maybe, maybe not.
But it seems to me that the mainstream media were doing all that they could to spin the story into something it appears that it was not, i.e., "a relationship killing."
