A bus dispatcher in northern China killed nine people and injured 11 others when he hijacked a company vehicle after a feud with his boss.
The man, surnamed Zhang, got into a fight with his boss and injured him with a dagger before stealing the bus and driving away into the streets of the city of Tianjin, the official Xinhua news agency said.
The 40-year-old motored through the streets, ramming into people and killing nine bystanders, the report said.
Police dispatched dozens of police cars to the scene, and Zhang ran into three of them, injuring four policemen, before finally being caught.
Authorities were investigating the case, the report said.
Source: Monday, February 1, 2010, Geelong Advertiser, Australia.
Showing posts with label Rampages. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rampages. Show all posts
Monday, February 1, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
VA: 8 Dead
The number of shooting incidents has increased dramatically in the USA since the Fort Hood incident. Whether the reasons are the copycat effect, behavior contagion, media reporting increase, or coincidence doesn't matter. It is happening and we are in the midst of a major cluster. Another shooting has occurred.
On Tuesday, January 19, 2010, a gunman went on a "rampage" (as the media is terming it) in the Virginia, killing eight people and shooting a police helicopter taking part in a hunt for him, officials said. A 39-year-old man was believed to be surrounded early Wednesday after the shootings in a rural district near Appomattox (where the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee took place, ending the Civil War) in southern Virginia. Police confirmed that there were eight dead.
The suspect, named as Christopher Speight, shot a helicopter that was called to the scene at least four times, forcing it to make an emergency landing, officials said.
[Some of the first settlers in America with this family name, Speight, or its variants, were Frances Speight who settled in Virginia in 1642; William and Mary Speights plus their daughter Elizabeth in Barbados in 1678; and Christopher Speight in New England in 1760. The family motto is "by strength and valor." One of the more well-known holders of the name was Englishman Mark Warwick Fordham Speight (August 6, 1965 – April 7, 2008), who was an English television presenter, who once played the "Abominable No Man" in Timmy Mallett's Timmy Towers. On the afternoon of January 3, 2008, Speight called emergency services after waking up to discover fiancée Natasha Collins's body in the bath of their St John's Wood flat, in northwest London. He was originally arrested and charged with her murder. An inquest later determined Collins had died of a drug overdose and severe burns from hot water. Then on April 7, 2008, Speight was reported missing and soon found that he had died by suicide by hanging near Paddington Station. He left suicide notes saying he could not live without Collins.]
"More than 100 deputies, officers and state troopers will continue working through the night to locate and apprehend the armed subject" Virginia State Police said in a statement.
The incident unfolded around noon on Tuesday when a deputy from the Appomattox sheriff's office responded to an emergency call about an injured man lying on a country road.
"When the deputy arrived on scene, the deputy heard several gun shots," Sergeant Thomas Molnar, a spokesman for the Virginia State Police told AFP.
As the victim was being airlifted to a nearby hospital, where he later died, officers found four bodies outside a nearby home and "three bodies inside the residence."
The victims were male and female, according to police.
The shootings were said to be the act of a lone gunman, who was pinned down by police in nearby woods late Tuesday, officials said.
A nearby residence was evacuated as the manhunt grew ever tenser.
"The perimeter has been established and we believe the suspect is within the quarantined area," Molnar said.
A motive for the attacks was not immediately clear.
On Tuesday, January 19, 2010, a gunman went on a "rampage" (as the media is terming it) in the Virginia, killing eight people and shooting a police helicopter taking part in a hunt for him, officials said. A 39-year-old man was believed to be surrounded early Wednesday after the shootings in a rural district near Appomattox (where the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee took place, ending the Civil War) in southern Virginia. Police confirmed that there were eight dead.
The suspect, named as Christopher Speight, shot a helicopter that was called to the scene at least four times, forcing it to make an emergency landing, officials said.
[Some of the first settlers in America with this family name, Speight, or its variants, were Frances Speight who settled in Virginia in 1642; William and Mary Speights plus their daughter Elizabeth in Barbados in 1678; and Christopher Speight in New England in 1760. The family motto is "by strength and valor." One of the more well-known holders of the name was Englishman Mark Warwick Fordham Speight (August 6, 1965 – April 7, 2008), who was an English television presenter, who once played the "Abominable No Man" in Timmy Mallett's Timmy Towers. On the afternoon of January 3, 2008, Speight called emergency services after waking up to discover fiancée Natasha Collins's body in the bath of their St John's Wood flat, in northwest London. He was originally arrested and charged with her murder. An inquest later determined Collins had died of a drug overdose and severe burns from hot water. Then on April 7, 2008, Speight was reported missing and soon found that he had died by suicide by hanging near Paddington Station. He left suicide notes saying he could not live without Collins.]
"More than 100 deputies, officers and state troopers will continue working through the night to locate and apprehend the armed subject" Virginia State Police said in a statement.
The incident unfolded around noon on Tuesday when a deputy from the Appomattox sheriff's office responded to an emergency call about an injured man lying on a country road.
"When the deputy arrived on scene, the deputy heard several gun shots," Sergeant Thomas Molnar, a spokesman for the Virginia State Police told AFP.
As the victim was being airlifted to a nearby hospital, where he later died, officers found four bodies outside a nearby home and "three bodies inside the residence."
The victims were male and female, according to police.
The shootings were said to be the act of a lone gunman, who was pinned down by police in nearby woods late Tuesday, officials said.
A nearby residence was evacuated as the manhunt grew ever tenser.
"The perimeter has been established and we believe the suspect is within the quarantined area," Molnar said.
A motive for the attacks was not immediately clear.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Saipan: 5 Dead
Saipan will forever be remembered as the site of one of World War II's deadliest suicidal melodramas. Now a new incident has unfolded on the island, beginning and ending near those past cliffs of suicide.
Saipan is often recalled as the setting where thousands of Japanese soldiers and local civilians jumped to their deaths from the island's cliffs as the American assault drew to a close in July 1944. As the battle of Saipan reached its final days, Japanese soldiers and panicked civilians made their way north to the cliffs. The civilians and soldiers leapt from the island's Marpi Point and other cliffs, dying on the rocks or drowning in the sea.
Now a shooting spree that began near one of those points has ended in suicide near another of those same cliffs. A gunman went on a rampage on the Pacific resort island of Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, on Friday, November 20, 2009, killing four people and wounding six others before fatally shooting himself, officials said.
Public Safety spokesman Jason Tarkong said two men, a 4-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl were killed in a half-hour of violence. The dead were all local residents.
The six wounded included a 4-year-old local girl and five visitors from South Korea.
"The lieutenant governor and I are monitoring the situation closely and working with officials from (Public Safety) and the FBI and we will continue to keep everyone informed," Gov. Benigno R. Fitial said.
Authorities said the suspected shooter is a contract worker in his 30s or 40s from Asia, but did not provide his name or home country.
The shootings occurred in two different areas of the island, starting at 11:21 a.m. local time with a popular tourist spot in Marpi where the gunman fired a barrage of bullets from his white van at the Koreans. A 39-year-old man was critically injured with a gunshot wound to his back.
The suspect then drove to the Kannat Tabla Shooting Range where he killed two men in their early 20s and the two children. He also shot a 4-year-old girl, who suffered a gunshot wound to the chest and was in critical condition.
His white van was discovered at Banzai Cliff, where police recovered three rifles.
Officials said the gunman's body was found along the edge off the cliff line near the vehicle with a .22-caliber rifle strapped around his shoulder.
"I want to assure the people of the commonwealth and all of our visiting tourists that the Department of Public Safety has the situation under control and that the individual responsible for these tragedies took his own life," Fitial said, in a summarized report from Gemma Casas and Kwang-tae Kim of the Associated Press.
Saipan is a popular tourist destination among South Koreans, with more than 111,000 South Koreans visiting the island in 2008, according to the Marianas Visitors Authority. The U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is located about 3,800 miles southwest of Hawaii.
During World War II, as the Battle of Saipan raged, despite repeated calls by the U.S. military to surrender, civilians chose death by jumping off cliffs or drowning themselves in the sea. They had been led to believe that surrender would mean murder, rape and torture at the hands of U.S. forces. Captured soldiers and civilians, instead, were treated with respect and confined at Camp Susupe.
According to a report on PBS, "On July 9, [1944] organized resistance on Saipan ceased. The costs were high. Americans suffered more than 14,000 casualties including 3,426 killed or missing. Of the 30,000 Japanese troops that defended Saipan, less than 1,000 remained alive at battle's end. Although exact numbers are not known, it is believed that close to 1,000 civilians perished at Marpi Point."
Saipan is often recalled as the setting where thousands of Japanese soldiers and local civilians jumped to their deaths from the island's cliffs as the American assault drew to a close in July 1944. As the battle of Saipan reached its final days, Japanese soldiers and panicked civilians made their way north to the cliffs. The civilians and soldiers leapt from the island's Marpi Point and other cliffs, dying on the rocks or drowning in the sea.
Now a shooting spree that began near one of those points has ended in suicide near another of those same cliffs. A gunman went on a rampage on the Pacific resort island of Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, on Friday, November 20, 2009, killing four people and wounding six others before fatally shooting himself, officials said.
Public Safety spokesman Jason Tarkong said two men, a 4-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl were killed in a half-hour of violence. The dead were all local residents.
The six wounded included a 4-year-old local girl and five visitors from South Korea.
"The lieutenant governor and I are monitoring the situation closely and working with officials from (Public Safety) and the FBI and we will continue to keep everyone informed," Gov. Benigno R. Fitial said.
Authorities said the suspected shooter is a contract worker in his 30s or 40s from Asia, but did not provide his name or home country.
The shootings occurred in two different areas of the island, starting at 11:21 a.m. local time with a popular tourist spot in Marpi where the gunman fired a barrage of bullets from his white van at the Koreans. A 39-year-old man was critically injured with a gunshot wound to his back.
The suspect then drove to the Kannat Tabla Shooting Range where he killed two men in their early 20s and the two children. He also shot a 4-year-old girl, who suffered a gunshot wound to the chest and was in critical condition.
His white van was discovered at Banzai Cliff, where police recovered three rifles.
Officials said the gunman's body was found along the edge off the cliff line near the vehicle with a .22-caliber rifle strapped around his shoulder.
"I want to assure the people of the commonwealth and all of our visiting tourists that the Department of Public Safety has the situation under control and that the individual responsible for these tragedies took his own life," Fitial said, in a summarized report from Gemma Casas and Kwang-tae Kim of the Associated Press.
Saipan is a popular tourist destination among South Koreans, with more than 111,000 South Koreans visiting the island in 2008, according to the Marianas Visitors Authority. The U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is located about 3,800 miles southwest of Hawaii.
During World War II, as the Battle of Saipan raged, despite repeated calls by the U.S. military to surrender, civilians chose death by jumping off cliffs or drowning themselves in the sea. They had been led to believe that surrender would mean murder, rape and torture at the hands of U.S. forces. Captured soldiers and civilians, instead, were treated with respect and confined at Camp Susupe.
According to a report on PBS, "On July 9, [1944] organized resistance on Saipan ceased. The costs were high. Americans suffered more than 14,000 casualties including 3,426 killed or missing. Of the 30,000 Japanese troops that defended Saipan, less than 1,000 remained alive at battle's end. Although exact numbers are not known, it is believed that close to 1,000 civilians perished at Marpi Point."
Sunday, April 5, 2009
A Week Of Body Counts
I predicted an increasing build-up in copycat activity as the calendar ticks off days moving towards April 20, 2009, the tenth anniversary of Columbine.
Here's the week that just was (click on the dates for full details):
Saturday, March 27.
A 23-year-old beheads his younger sister Bianca, 5, and kills Samantha Revelus, 17, at their home in Milton, Massachusetts. The killer is killed by police officers.
Sunday, March 29.
Seven patients and a nurse were killed during a Sunday morning shooting at a Carthage, North Carolina, nursing home. The 45-year-old man accused of carrying out the attack was shot by a police officer, and his condition "is currently unknown."
Friday, April 3.
A 41-year-old gunman barricaded the back door of a community center with his car and then opened fire on a room full of immigrants taking a citizenship class Friday, killing 13 people before dying by suicide, in Binghamton, New York.
Saturday, April 4.
The bodies of five children between the ages of 7 and 16 years old and their father were found dead in separate locations south of Seattle, near Orting, Washington State on Saturday. The father apparently killed his children before dying by suicide near a casino some distance away from their home.
Three Pittsburgh police officers responding to a domestic-disturbance call on the morning of Saturday, were killed when a man, who is hiding and waiting, armed with an AK-47, opened fire on them.
Other very recent shootings include these:
A gunman (pictured above) killed 10 people and himself in Samson, Alabama; shootings that began with a traffic stop in Oakland, California, left four police officers and the gunman dead; an apparent murder-suicide in Santa Clara, California, left six dead. At an Illinois church, a man shot and killed the pastor and stabbed two parishioners, and a 17-year-old (below) in Germany killed 15 people in two small towns before dying in a shootout with police.
Updates: It appears I'm not the only one with the notion that an overview is in order. Thanks to Patrick Huyghe who told me about "No End In Sight," after I wrote the above.
Another overview article has been published on Monday: "Deadly Rampages Rack the Nation," Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2009.
Yet another such long discussion has been published, and it notes the role of the media and other factors.
The AP detailed it this way, later on April 5th:
A string of shootings in the U.S. in the last month alone has claimed the lives of 53 people:
_MARCH 10, SAMSON, Ala. — A gunman kills 10 people and commits suicide in a rampage that spanned two dozen miles across the southern Alabama countryside. Police say Michael McLendon had struggled to keep a job and left behind lists of employers and co-workers he believed had wronged him.
_MARCH 22, OAKLAND, Calif. — A man pulled over in a routine traffic stop fatally shoots two officers and then kills two more in a gunfight in which the suspect was also killed. Relatives say Lovelle Mixon, 26, had been frustrated about not finding work and feared returning to jail.
_MARCH 29, SANTA CLARA, Calif. — A man shoots and kills his two children and three other relatives, then kills himself at a family housewarming party in an upscale neighborhood. Investigators don't yet know the motive of Devan Kalathat, a 42-year-old engineer at Yahoo.
_MARCH 29, CARTHAGE, N.C. — A man opens fire in a nursing home and kills seven elderly residents and a nurse who cared for them. Investigators say Robert Stewart, 45, apparently had targeted an estranged wife, a nurse's assistant who escaped by hiding in a bathroom.
_APRIL 3, BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — A gunman bursts into an immigrant center and kills 13 people before killing himself. Police say Jiverly Wong, a 41-year-old Vietnamese immigrant, was apparently upset about losing his job and about people picking on him for his limited English.
_APRIL 4, PITTSBURGH — A gunman wearing a bulletproof vest opens fire on officers responding to a domestic disturbance call, killing three of them. Police say Richard Poplawski, 23, had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.
_APRIL 4, GRAHAM, Wash. — A man fatally shoots his five children in their mobile home and then takes his own life in his car miles away. Relatives identified the father as James Harrison. A motive was not yet known.
Support my research, please, and today....click below:
Thank you.
Here's the week that just was (click on the dates for full details):
Saturday, March 27.
A 23-year-old beheads his younger sister Bianca, 5, and kills Samantha Revelus, 17, at their home in Milton, Massachusetts. The killer is killed by police officers.
Sunday, March 29.
Seven patients and a nurse were killed during a Sunday morning shooting at a Carthage, North Carolina, nursing home. The 45-year-old man accused of carrying out the attack was shot by a police officer, and his condition "is currently unknown."
Friday, April 3.
A 41-year-old gunman barricaded the back door of a community center with his car and then opened fire on a room full of immigrants taking a citizenship class Friday, killing 13 people before dying by suicide, in Binghamton, New York.
Saturday, April 4.
The bodies of five children between the ages of 7 and 16 years old and their father were found dead in separate locations south of Seattle, near Orting, Washington State on Saturday. The father apparently killed his children before dying by suicide near a casino some distance away from their home.
Three Pittsburgh police officers responding to a domestic-disturbance call on the morning of Saturday, were killed when a man, who is hiding and waiting, armed with an AK-47, opened fire on them.
Other very recent shootings include these:
A gunman (pictured above) killed 10 people and himself in Samson, Alabama; shootings that began with a traffic stop in Oakland, California, left four police officers and the gunman dead; an apparent murder-suicide in Santa Clara, California, left six dead. At an Illinois church, a man shot and killed the pastor and stabbed two parishioners, and a 17-year-old (below) in Germany killed 15 people in two small towns before dying in a shootout with police.
Updates: It appears I'm not the only one with the notion that an overview is in order. Thanks to Patrick Huyghe who told me about "No End In Sight," after I wrote the above.
Another overview article has been published on Monday: "Deadly Rampages Rack the Nation," Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2009.
Yet another such long discussion has been published, and it notes the role of the media and other factors.
The AP detailed it this way, later on April 5th:
A string of shootings in the U.S. in the last month alone has claimed the lives of 53 people:
_MARCH 10, SAMSON, Ala. — A gunman kills 10 people and commits suicide in a rampage that spanned two dozen miles across the southern Alabama countryside. Police say Michael McLendon had struggled to keep a job and left behind lists of employers and co-workers he believed had wronged him.
_MARCH 22, OAKLAND, Calif. — A man pulled over in a routine traffic stop fatally shoots two officers and then kills two more in a gunfight in which the suspect was also killed. Relatives say Lovelle Mixon, 26, had been frustrated about not finding work and feared returning to jail.
_MARCH 29, SANTA CLARA, Calif. — A man shoots and kills his two children and three other relatives, then kills himself at a family housewarming party in an upscale neighborhood. Investigators don't yet know the motive of Devan Kalathat, a 42-year-old engineer at Yahoo.
_MARCH 29, CARTHAGE, N.C. — A man opens fire in a nursing home and kills seven elderly residents and a nurse who cared for them. Investigators say Robert Stewart, 45, apparently had targeted an estranged wife, a nurse's assistant who escaped by hiding in a bathroom.
_APRIL 3, BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — A gunman bursts into an immigrant center and kills 13 people before killing himself. Police say Jiverly Wong, a 41-year-old Vietnamese immigrant, was apparently upset about losing his job and about people picking on him for his limited English.
_APRIL 4, PITTSBURGH — A gunman wearing a bulletproof vest opens fire on officers responding to a domestic disturbance call, killing three of them. Police say Richard Poplawski, 23, had been upset about losing his job and feared the Obama administration was poised to ban guns.
_APRIL 4, GRAHAM, Wash. — A man fatally shoots his five children in their mobile home and then takes his own life in his car miles away. Relatives identified the father as James Harrison. A motive was not yet known.
Support my research, please, and today....click below:
Thank you.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Bulldozer Rampages
Three incidents in eight months have involved a Palestinian construction worker using a heavy construction vehicle to go on a "rampage-style" attack in Israel. All three mirror the infamous Killdozer incident that occurred in Colorado in 2004.
Two of the Israeli incidents occurred in July of 2008.
On July 2, 2008, a Palestinian construction worker, Hussam Taysir Duwait, used a Caterpillar 966 front-end loader (incorrectly called a "bulldozer" in early media reports) in a deadly rampage in central Jerusalem on Jaffa Street. He used the construction vehicle to crush several cars and ram into buses and pedestrians, killing three people and injuring 45, before he was shot and killed by Israeli police.
The identity of the man who shot the driver is an intriguing detail of the incident. At the point when the vehicle had stopped for the first time, three men had climbed up to the cabin: A 20-year old off-duty soldier from Jerusalem who had recently enlisted as an elite Israel Defense Forces commando and whose name has been published as "Moshe Plesser," armed civilian Oron Ben Shimon, who is a regional manager of a security firm, as well as an unnamed policeman.
According to Oron, while he was struggling with the driver inside the cabin, he shouted at the soldier to shoot the driver. The soldier then grabbed Oron's handgun and killed Duwait with three shots to the head at point blank range. The soldier was quoted as saying that "I got closer to the bulldozer, the whole time looking for my weapon to shoot him." Coincidentally, the soldier is the brother-in-law of Captain David Shapira, the paratrooper officer who shot and killed the perpetrator in the Mercaz HaRav massacre.
Three weeks later, on Tuesday, July 22, 2008, another east Jerusalem Arab resident, Ghassan Abu Tir, drove an earth-moving machine into a number of cars in downtown Jerusalem, before he was shot and killed. That attack, which left some 16 people injured, took place in Jerusalem’s upscale hotel district, close to the King David Hotel, where Senator Barack Obama, the then-presumptive Democratic nominee for president, was to stay on Tuesday evening.
The July 22 attack occurred near the Israeli presidential residence, where President Shimon Peres was having lunch with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. It was the first visit by a Palestinian leader to the residence.
The driver, Ghassan Abu Tir, a Jerusalem resident in his early 20s, came from Umm Tuba, an Arab village in the southeast area of the city with a strong Hamas presence.
Now it has happened again.
On Thursday, March 5, 2009, a Palestinian driver was shot dead in Jerusalem after slamming his tractor into a police car and a bus. The killing happened as tensions flare over Israel's planned demolition of Arab homes in East Jerusalem and a spate of new violence in Gaza.
It was a scene of chaos on Jerusalem's busy Menachim Begin Highway in the moments after police said the Palestinian driver of a large construction vehicle smashed the front-end loader into a police car and a bus.
An Israeli cab driver told Israel Radio he pulled a gun and opened fire on the Palestinian.
He said he saw a terrorist act, and saw the police car fly into the air. He said he got out of his car with his gun. He said he fired four shots and killed the man. Then, he said, a policeman came and "finished the man off."
Police and hospital officials said the man died from his wounds. The officers inside the car sustained minor injuries.
Police said they found a copy of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, open in the vehicle - something Israeli authorities in the past have associated with attacks by Muslim extremists.
No one has claimed responsibility for the crash.
Officials are probing the circumstances surrounding the incident, but Israeli authorities quickly labeled it an act of terrorism.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat went on television shortly after and called it "an attack to murder innocent people."
Tensions remain high due to Israel's plans to demolish scores of Arab homes built without permits in East Jerusalem to make way for an archeological zone.
Copycats of the Thursday incident could happen.
After the two attacks of last July, it is to be noted, in September 2008, a Palestinian was shot and killed after he drove his car into a group of Israeli soldiers near Jerusalem's Old City.
The BMW terror attack of September 22, 2008, in which a resident of East Jerusalem drove a black BMW into a group of off-duty soldiers standing on a Jerusalem street injuring 19, was an apparent copycat attack, said The New York Times reporter Isabel Kershner.
Similar "rampages" have occurred outside of Israel, including two relatively infamous cases.
A M60A3 TTS tank was involved in a police chase, when one was stolen by Shawn Nelson, 35, an unemployed plumber, from an Army National Guard armory and taken on a rampage through San Diego, California. The M60 Patton tank was taken on its rampage on May 17, 1995, destroying cars, fire hydrants, and an RV. Nelson was killed by police when he refused to surrender after the tank got stuck on concrete freeway dividers. News footage of the 23-minute, televised chase through the streets of the Clairemont neighborhood in San Diego, has been shown numerous times on "World's Wildest Police Videos" and other such programs.
Finally, there is the so-called "Killdozer" event.
Marvin John Heemeyer (October 28, 1951 – June 4, 2004) was an American welder and owner of an automobile muffler repair shop. On June 4, 2004, frustrated over the adverse outcome of a zoning dispute, Heemeyer used a Komatsu D355A bulldozer armored with layers of steel and concrete to demolish the town hall, a former judge's home and other buildings in Granby, Colorado. The rampage ended when the bulldozer became immobilized. After a standoff with law enforcement agencies, Heemeyer died when he used his .357-caliber handgun to kill himself.
The Killdozer, as it was called in news reports, had been fitted with makeshift armor plating covering the cabin, engine and parts of the tracks. For visibility, the bulldozer was fitted with several video cameras linked to two monitors mounted on the vehicle's dashboard. The cameras were protected on the outside by 3-inch shields of bulletresistant plastic. Onboard fans and an air conditioner were used to keep Heemeyer cool while driving and compressed air nozzles were fitted to blow dust away from the video cameras. Food, water and life support were present in the almost airtight cabin. In places, the vehicle's armor was over one foot thick, consisting of concrete sandwiched between sheets of steel to make ad-hoc composite armor. This made the machine impervious to small arms fire and resistant to explosives; three external explosions and over 200 rounds of firearm ammunition fired at the bulldozer had no effect on it.
Two of the Israeli incidents occurred in July of 2008.
On July 2, 2008, a Palestinian construction worker, Hussam Taysir Duwait, used a Caterpillar 966 front-end loader (incorrectly called a "bulldozer" in early media reports) in a deadly rampage in central Jerusalem on Jaffa Street. He used the construction vehicle to crush several cars and ram into buses and pedestrians, killing three people and injuring 45, before he was shot and killed by Israeli police.
The identity of the man who shot the driver is an intriguing detail of the incident. At the point when the vehicle had stopped for the first time, three men had climbed up to the cabin: A 20-year old off-duty soldier from Jerusalem who had recently enlisted as an elite Israel Defense Forces commando and whose name has been published as "Moshe Plesser," armed civilian Oron Ben Shimon, who is a regional manager of a security firm, as well as an unnamed policeman.
According to Oron, while he was struggling with the driver inside the cabin, he shouted at the soldier to shoot the driver. The soldier then grabbed Oron's handgun and killed Duwait with three shots to the head at point blank range. The soldier was quoted as saying that "I got closer to the bulldozer, the whole time looking for my weapon to shoot him." Coincidentally, the soldier is the brother-in-law of Captain David Shapira, the paratrooper officer who shot and killed the perpetrator in the Mercaz HaRav massacre.
Three weeks later, on Tuesday, July 22, 2008, another east Jerusalem Arab resident, Ghassan Abu Tir, drove an earth-moving machine into a number of cars in downtown Jerusalem, before he was shot and killed. That attack, which left some 16 people injured, took place in Jerusalem’s upscale hotel district, close to the King David Hotel, where Senator Barack Obama, the then-presumptive Democratic nominee for president, was to stay on Tuesday evening.
The July 22 attack occurred near the Israeli presidential residence, where President Shimon Peres was having lunch with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. It was the first visit by a Palestinian leader to the residence.
The driver, Ghassan Abu Tir, a Jerusalem resident in his early 20s, came from Umm Tuba, an Arab village in the southeast area of the city with a strong Hamas presence.
Now it has happened again.
On Thursday, March 5, 2009, a Palestinian driver was shot dead in Jerusalem after slamming his tractor into a police car and a bus. The killing happened as tensions flare over Israel's planned demolition of Arab homes in East Jerusalem and a spate of new violence in Gaza.
It was a scene of chaos on Jerusalem's busy Menachim Begin Highway in the moments after police said the Palestinian driver of a large construction vehicle smashed the front-end loader into a police car and a bus.
An Israeli cab driver told Israel Radio he pulled a gun and opened fire on the Palestinian.
He said he saw a terrorist act, and saw the police car fly into the air. He said he got out of his car with his gun. He said he fired four shots and killed the man. Then, he said, a policeman came and "finished the man off."
Police and hospital officials said the man died from his wounds. The officers inside the car sustained minor injuries.
Police said they found a copy of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, open in the vehicle - something Israeli authorities in the past have associated with attacks by Muslim extremists.
No one has claimed responsibility for the crash.
Officials are probing the circumstances surrounding the incident, but Israeli authorities quickly labeled it an act of terrorism.
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat went on television shortly after and called it "an attack to murder innocent people."
Tensions remain high due to Israel's plans to demolish scores of Arab homes built without permits in East Jerusalem to make way for an archeological zone.
Copycats of the Thursday incident could happen.
After the two attacks of last July, it is to be noted, in September 2008, a Palestinian was shot and killed after he drove his car into a group of Israeli soldiers near Jerusalem's Old City.
The BMW terror attack of September 22, 2008, in which a resident of East Jerusalem drove a black BMW into a group of off-duty soldiers standing on a Jerusalem street injuring 19, was an apparent copycat attack, said The New York Times reporter Isabel Kershner.
Similar "rampages" have occurred outside of Israel, including two relatively infamous cases.
A M60A3 TTS tank was involved in a police chase, when one was stolen by Shawn Nelson, 35, an unemployed plumber, from an Army National Guard armory and taken on a rampage through San Diego, California. The M60 Patton tank was taken on its rampage on May 17, 1995, destroying cars, fire hydrants, and an RV. Nelson was killed by police when he refused to surrender after the tank got stuck on concrete freeway dividers. News footage of the 23-minute, televised chase through the streets of the Clairemont neighborhood in San Diego, has been shown numerous times on "World's Wildest Police Videos" and other such programs.
Finally, there is the so-called "Killdozer" event.
Marvin John Heemeyer (October 28, 1951 – June 4, 2004) was an American welder and owner of an automobile muffler repair shop. On June 4, 2004, frustrated over the adverse outcome of a zoning dispute, Heemeyer used a Komatsu D355A bulldozer armored with layers of steel and concrete to demolish the town hall, a former judge's home and other buildings in Granby, Colorado. The rampage ended when the bulldozer became immobilized. After a standoff with law enforcement agencies, Heemeyer died when he used his .357-caliber handgun to kill himself.
The Killdozer, as it was called in news reports, had been fitted with makeshift armor plating covering the cabin, engine and parts of the tracks. For visibility, the bulldozer was fitted with several video cameras linked to two monitors mounted on the vehicle's dashboard. The cameras were protected on the outside by 3-inch shields of bulletresistant plastic. Onboard fans and an air conditioner were used to keep Heemeyer cool while driving and compressed air nozzles were fitted to blow dust away from the video cameras. Food, water and life support were present in the almost airtight cabin. In places, the vehicle's armor was over one foot thick, consisting of concrete sandwiched between sheets of steel to make ad-hoc composite armor. This made the machine impervious to small arms fire and resistant to explosives; three external explosions and over 200 rounds of firearm ammunition fired at the bulldozer had no effect on it.
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