In what the authorities have described as a possible Nazi hate crime, a man wearing a gas mask broke into a woman's mobile home in this Tampa suburb early on Thursday morning, slashed her face and arms, and fatally wounded a friend of her son by stabbing him in the neck.
The 45-year-old woman, Patricia Wells, who is white, told officers that she had been attacked because she dates a black man, the police said. A small compound occupied by neo-Nazis is next door to Wells' home, and she said members of the group had previously threatened to kill her and her boyfriend.
target
A former member of the group, David Dirolf, 21, said in an interview that he had heard members threaten Wells and her son on several occasions. Wells' son was a target because he is gay, Dirolf said, adding that he thought the 17-year-old boy who was stabbed had been mistaken for the son, who was not home.
That victim, Kristofer Guy King, died on Friday afternoon. Wells was treated at a hospital and released.
Two men have been taken into custody in the wake of the attack, though neither has been charged in connection with it.
The first of them, John Ditullio, 20, was arrested early on Thursday by a SWAT team that stormed the compound, where Nazi flags were displayed outside. Ditullio was seized on unrelated charges of domestic battery but is also being questioned about the stabbings, the authorities said.
The other man is Shawn Plott, 33, whom the Pasco County Sheriff's Office arrested on an outstanding warrant for failure to appear in court on drunken-driving and other charges.
`affiliated'
Plott, who was described as being "affiliated" with the neo-Nazi group, is known to have lived at four addresses within the small mobile home neighborhood. One of those is the compound, where, said Dirolf, the former member, as many as 20 people resided at any given time.
Dirolf, who has tattoos of a swastika on his chest and Hitler on his arm, said he broke from the neo-Nazis three months ago but still lived down the street.
"It was the worst time of my life," he said. "When they drink whiskey, everything gets wild and they start shooting," he said.
Lieutenant Robert Sullivan of the sheriff's office said 80 to 90 people in the county were believed to be affiliated with the group. Complaints of gunfire and fights at the compound have been common, Sullivan said.
One neighbor said that a few months ago, she saw several men armed with rifles leave the Nazi compound and chase Wells' boyfriend down the street. The neighbor said she was too afraid to be identified by name.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS