Two men killed trying to stop anti-Muslim rant

WASHINGTON: A man fatally stabbed two passengers aboard a Portland, Oregon, commuter train after they tried to stop him from harassing two young women who appeared to be Muslim, police said on Saturday.

Police identified the assailant, who was arrested soon after the Friday afternoon attack, as Jeremy Joseph Christian of Portland, a 35-year-old convicted felon.

A senior researcher with the Southern Poverty Law Center, in a blog post, said Christian’s Facebook page showed he held “some racist and other extremist beliefs”.

“It’s too early to say whether last night’s violence was an act of domestic terrorism or a federal hate crime,” Loren Cannon, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Oregon told a news conference on Saturday, adding the bureau had joined the investigation.

“Christian started shouting ethnic and religious slurs, apparently at the two young women, one of whom wore a Muslim head-covering,” the Portland police department said in a statement.

Three men who intervened were stabbed.

Ricky John Best, 53, died at the scene while Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche, 23, died at a hospital, police said.

Micah David-Cole Fletcher, 21, remained in a local hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries.

Christian was booked on two counts of aggravated murder and charges of attempted murder, intimidation and being a felon in possession of a restricted weapon, and was ordered held without bail. His arraignment is scheduled for tomorrow.

The women, who had left the train before officers arrived, were later in contact with authorities, according to police, who have not released their identities.

Dyjuana Hudson, the mother of one of them, told The Oregonian newspaper her 16-year-old daughter, who is black, boarded the train with a Muslim friend, also a teenager, who was wearing a hijab.

The attacker approached the girls while screaming at them, Hudson told the newspaper, relaying an account her daughter had given her.

“He was saying that Muslims should die,” Hudson said. – Reuters