If You See Something, Say Something

10/15/26 Chicago Tribune:

A jammed gun and workers at an Arlington Heights Taco Bell restaurant prevented a potentially devastating mass shooting Sunday at a Hindu temple in Aurora.

Those were among the details to emerge Thursday as authorities released additional information about the arrest of a 19-year-old Palatine man accused of plotting a terrorist attack on the Sri Venkateswara Swami Balaji Temple.

Cook County prosecutors said Alexandros Paporakis told a Taco Bell co-worker he had gone to the temple Sunday and attempted to shoot someone from his car, but his rifle jammed.

He indicated he intended to return later Sunday to try again, but a co-worker called 911 and stopped the potential massacre, authorities said.

The story gets more interesting. A "Heritage American"? Apparently not. 10/16/26 Chicago Tribune:

Paporakis, an enrolled student at Harper College, was allegedly living with his mother at the time of the planned attack and had been for about a year, Palatine police Chief William Nord said Wednesday. But a guardianship petition filed in Cook County last month alleges that his mother was unable to provide a stable home and that his father had abused and abandoned him. Those circumstances, the petition states, left the teenager unable to return to his home country.

The Tribune could not independently verify which country the petition referred to as Paporakis’ home country. The teenager’s own writings, according to court documents, suggest a hatred rooted less in national origin than in race and religion.

“The shooter hated Indians, but his hate did not discriminate,” U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi said at a news conference Friday, as he appeared to hold back tears. “According to court documents, the manifesto that he wrote described Indians, Jews, Black people and other minorities as ‘subhuman’”.

That seems like a Greek name to me. Perhaps, the entire spectrum of antisocial media found a new host to infect. In the 1990s, I recall a mass murder at a college in Western Massachusetts carried out by a neo-Nazi Korean.