Popal will be tried

Omeed Aziz Popal, the Fremont, California, man who went on a car fueled rampage in August, during which he killed one man and injured 18 others (including one woman who ended up paralyzed from the neck down) will be tried:

Omeed Aziz Popal, 29, faces 18 counts of attempted murder for the Aug. 29 rampage. Judge Mary Morgan of San Francisco Superior Court found that he was competent to be tried after reviewing a nine-page report from a court-appointed doctor.

The doctor wrote that Popal, who has been confined to the psychiatric ward of San Francisco General Hospital, had reacted well to a recent change in medication.

The trial should be interesting. Many people (myself included) suspected that this was a “driving while Muslim” crime. We were quickly assured by the PC police (and by the real police) that it wasn’t. The trial should be helpful in providing a little more information.

I feel that, even if Popal isn’t altogether there (and I think there’s a very good possibility that this is the case), that doesn’t necessarily mean that his religion wasn’t a motive. As I’ve often pointed out, when people are truly insane, their insanity still tends to reflect their societal belief systems. In the old days, insane people believed they were witches (or that witches were acting against them). In the 1950s to the present, Western schizophrenics often have space alien obsessions. It therefore wouldn’t surprise me if Popal, whether clinically insane or not, had an anti-Western or anti-Jewish obsession.

Another thing that should prove interesting about the trial will be the media coverage itself. As I noted, in the wake of Popal’s attack, everyone in the media and the SF Administration was swift to assure us that Islam had nothing to do with it. That wasn’t the case two months later when, tragically, a mother of six in the same community was gunned down. As Don Quixote pointed out, the very first supposition was that she was killed because of her religion.

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