Man on ‘jihad’ gets life for student’s murder
Superior Court judge called the crime ‘heinous, horrific and brutal’
NEWARK, N.J. — A former Seattle resident who admitted killing four people on a self-proclaimed “jihad” to avenge U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East received a life sentence without parole Tuesday for the 2014 ambush of a college student sitting in his car at a traffic light in New Jersey.
Ali Muhammad Brown, 33, is expected to be extradited to Washington state to face charges in the three other killings.
On Tuesday, in a courtroom packed with more than 100 friends and relatives of the victim, Brown initially apologized to the parents and then went off on a rambling monologue in which he repeatedly asked to be treated “as a human being, not a monster.”
That didn’t sway state Superior Court Judge Ronald Wigler, who called Brendan Tevlin’s murder “one of the most heinous, horrific, brutal crimes I have presided over.”
Brown’s actions also didn’t change U.S. policy, but only “brought devastation … to a family who never did a thing to you,” Wigler told Brown.
The attack took place when Tevlin, a sophomore at Virginia’s University of Richmond, was driving home from a friend’s house, according to prosecutors. He was waiting at a traffic light less than 10 minutes from his home in the New Jersey town of Livingston, when Brown and two other men, following him in another car, jumped out and surrounded him.
Brown shot Tevlin through the passenger-side window, hitting him 10 times, and then shot him several more times as he tried to exit the car, Assistant Essex County Prosecutor Jamel Semper said Tuesday.