Why Did I Not Read This Earlier?

And why can't I find any news articles but this one from the Toledo Blade that mention it?

Ron Bliss thought he had found proof The Blade suppresses news that doesn't fit its "slant left" agenda.

"I was browsing the Internet and ran across a story on the 18-year-old mall shooter in Salt Lake City (who) was a Bosnian national. It told in the article that he was a Muslim and while he was killing the mall shoppers he was shouting Allah Akbar (Allah is Great.)

"Now then … this means it was either a terrorist act in America or at the very least, a hate crime."

Yet Mr. Bliss said he searched our archives and found nothing at all on the Feb. 12 shooting. If we deliberately suppressed it, he felt we should remove "One of America's Great Newspapers" from the front page.

Indeed, he would be right about our slogan if The Blade were deliberately censoring stories about Muslim terrorists. And if that were going on, I would have no desire to be associated with this newspaper.

But that's not what happened. In fact, The Blade ran at least five stories about the mall shooter, Sulejman Talovic, who had lived in Utah since his family fled Bosnia when he was 9 years old. Curiously, the newspaper did not report that he shouted "Allah Akbar" during his killing spree, which took the lives of five people before the police killed the gunman.

I have no idea why The Blade left that detail out since the Associated Press and other news services the paper subscribes to reported it.

Hmmm. A Muslim goes on a killing spree in a shopping mall, shouts "Allah Akbar" while doing so--and this doesn't get much press. This would seem to have some relevance, I think. You know, there was some unpleasantness a few years ago involving the World Trade Center, and I think the people that caused the unpleasantness might have said something like that before things got unpleasant.

Imagine if the killer had been a member of the World Church of the Creator, and had been yelling, "Heil Hitler" while shooting people in a mall. Do you suppose that newspapers would have left out that little detail? I rather doubt it.

No more unarmed shopping for me. Yes, he was probably just mentally ill, and fixated on religion as his justification for killing people, and not an al-Qaeda operative. But it makes me wonder if a mass murderer did something similar, and was an al-Qaeda operative, if we would be allowed to know that.

Thanks to Classical Values for bringing this to my attention.

UPDATE: This report from KSL TV in Salt Lake City claims that this is incorrect:

The Salt Lake Police Department always expects rumors when something big like last week's shooting happens. We heard a big one. It was even spread by Congressman Chris Cannon on the Doug Wright show this morning.

Congressman Chris Cannon: "We go from a kid shouting Allah Akbar as he shoots people in Trolley Square."

Was 18-year-old Suljmen Talovic yelling, "Allah Akbar, God is Great," while shooting people? KSL found out: no.

Robin Snyder/SLCPD: "We have no indication he was yelling anything of that nature at all."

Cannon's spokesperson said he heard it on Fox cable news. It could have started with a video from inside Trolley Square. You hear yelling, but if you listen closely, it's the off-duty police officer, Kenneth Hammond, yelling "Ogden Police Department," or OPD.

Does anyone have the video? It must be extremely poor audio if "Ogden Police Department" sounds like "Allah Akbar."