2 killed in US in bid to stop anti-Muslim rant

PORTLAND: A man fatally stabbed two people aboard a Portland, Oregon, commuter train when they tried to stop him from harassing two women who appeared to be Muslim, police said.

The attack on Friday afternoon unfolded hours before the start of Ramzan, Islam’s holy month, when most of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims observe a daily religious fast.

The incident began when the man started shouting ethnic and religious slurs at two women who appeared to be Muslim on a MAX train at the Hollywood Transit Station, the Portland Police Department said in a statement.

Three men who intervened were stabbed, two fatally.

The attacker, 35-year-old Jeremy Joseph Christian of Portland, was arrested shortly after he left the train, police said.

Christian was booked into jail on two counts of aggravated murder and additional charges of attempted murder, intimidation in the second degree and being a felon in possession of a restricted weapon, police said. He was ordered held without bail.

In a statement responding to Friday’s attack, the Council on American-Islamic Relations blamed an increase in anti-Muslim incidents in the United States in part on President Donald Trump’s focus on militant Islamist groups and anti-immigrant rhetoric. REUTERS