Black UCLA student from Belize suddenly pulls out knife, slashes throat of white female student in chemistry lab

As at Virginia Tech, a professor had previously reported that the student, a nonwhite immigrant like the Virginia Tech killer, was obviously paranoid and possibly dangerous, but nothing had been done.

Damon Thompson, who repeatedly stabbed fellow student Katherine Rosen

And so America continues to fulfill its destiny, so eloquently lauded by David Horowitz (see previous entry):

White European-American culture is a culture that the citizens of this nation can take enormous pride in, precisely because its principles … provide for the inclusion of cultures that are non-white and non-Christian (and which are not so tolerant in their lands of origin).

Or, as I put it at the time of the mass murder by immigrant Jiverly Wong in Binghamton, New York last April, in an updating of Emma Lazarus:

“Keep ancient lands, your civilized ways!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your head-cases, your screwy,
Your huddled mass murderers yearning to shoot free,
The angry misfits of your teeming shore.
Send these, the unassimilable, to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Here is the story from the Los Angeles Times:

UCLA student is charged with attempted murder in attack
He is accused of stabbing a classmate five times and slashing her throat in a premeditated and unprovoked attack in the chemistry lab.
By Andrew Blankstein and Robert Faturechi
October 14, 2009

A UCLA student allegedly stabbed a classmate five times and slashed her throat in a crime that prosecutors said Tuesday was premeditated and unprovoked.

Damon Thompson, 20, was charged with one count of attempted murder in Thursday’s attack in a chemistry lab in Young Hall.

If convicted, he could face life in state prison with the possibility of parole.

Thompson pleaded not guilty and was ordered held on $3-million bail by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Keith L. Schwartz after prosecutors argued that the Belize native was a flight risk.

Defense attorney Robin B. Berkovitz described her client as a hard-working biochemistry major with no criminal record.

She said his mother flew in from Belize and his father came from out of state to attend the arraignment at the Airport Courthouse in Westchester.

“I was assigned to the case today. There is a lot of information that has yet to be presented,” Berkovitz said Tuesday. “It’s a sad situation for all parties involved.”

Despite initial reports that there had been an argument between the suspect and victim, prosecutors said the attack was unprovoked and that Thompson pulled out a knife and began stabbing the victim for no apparent reason.

Authorities said the victim, identified in court as Katherine Rosen, 20, suffered five stab wounds and a slashed throat.

Rosen was taken to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in critical condition but has been steadily improving, doctors said.

“Our patient is now out of the intensive-care unit and out of danger—and she is in good condition,” said Dr. Henry Gill Cryer, the hospital’s chief of trauma surgery.

UCLA professor Stephen Frank, who taught Thompson in his Western civilization class, said he told a university administrator 10 months ago that he was concerned about Thompson’s mental health after receiving e-mails from the student.

In the e-mails, Frank said, Thompson complained to him that classmates sitting near him had been disruptive and made offensive comments to him while he was taking a written exam.

In one of the e-mails, Thompson also accused Frank of taunting him.

“I believe I heard you, Professor Frank, say that I was ‘troubled’ and ‘crazy’ among other things,” Thompson wrote in the e-mail. “My outrage at this situation coupled with the pressure of the very weighted examination dulled my concentration and detracted from my performance.”

Frank denied Thompson’s claims and told administrators the e-mails indicated that Thompson was in need of help. Frank said he was told that other professors had reported similar exchanges with Thompson.

Rosen is a junior majoring in biochemistry, according to her Facebook page.

Elizabeth Turner, a teacher at South Torrance High School, where Rosen graduated, described her as an excellent student and musician.

- end of initial entry -

James P. writes:

“A UCLA student allegedly stabbed a classmate five times and slashed her throat in a crime that prosecutors said Tuesday was premeditated and unprovoked.”

At least they’re not calling it “random”!

LA replies:

Yes. Perhaps, once they brought the word “premeditated” into the picture, they inchoately sensed that “random” would stand out like a sore thumb. And maybe that’s the way to get the police departments and reporters of the country to stop calling murders “random” acts. Ask the police spokesman or reporter, “Is the perpetrator being charged with a premeditated act?” “Yes.” “But if it was a premeditated act, how can you call it a random act?” The obvious contradiction between premeditation and “randomness” will insensibly drive out the “random.”

Rick Darby writes:

“Defense attorney Robin B. Berkovitz described her client as a hard-working biochemistry major with no criminal record…. [Berkovitz said] ‘It’s a sad situation for all parties involved.’”

Yes, must be rough on the accused. He might eventually even have to drop out of UCLA. And think what his poor parents are going through!

What a setback for a young man of talent. He … Excuse me? Oh, yes, that woman, Katherine Rosen, being stabbed several times and getting her throat cut, ouch, that must hurt.

LA replies:

Berkovitz is just expressing rachmones, the Jewish word for compassion, Jewish liberals’ favorite concept, by which all truth is relativized in the name of goodness.

Jim C. writes:

I’d be interested in discovering how this stupid-looking guy gained admission to one of the jewels of the Cal system.

LA replies:

Your comment raises the possibility that this was an affirmative action attack. The alarming e-mails to his professor which the professor had earlier reported had to do with the young man’s anger over not doing well in a test. He said that something made it difficult for him to concentrate. Putting people into situations for which they lack the ability to perform can result in anger, and then violence.

October 15

Philip M. writes:

You wrote:

“A female reader recently said to me that it’s unnecessary as well as wrong to focus on the race of immigrants, because all America had to do to prevent the current multicultural catastrophe was to remain true to its ideals of individual rights and equality before the law and not give in to group rights.”

Your reader could do worse than read Enoch Powell’s “The Road To National Suicide” (not to be confused with another fine essay of a similar name) in which he explains very articulately why this vision is impossible:

“In understanding this matter, the beginning of wisdom is to grasp the law that in human societies power is never left unclaimed and unused. It does not blow about, like wastepaper on the streets, ownerless and inert. Men’s nature is not only, as Thucydides long ago asserted, to exert power where they have it; men cannot help themselves from exerting power where they have it, whether they want to or not. The coloured population of over two million in England, a population which grows at the rate of nearly 100,000 a year while the remainder diminishes, a population which is predominantly concentrated in the central areas of the metropolis and other key urban and industrial centers of England, does possess simply by reason of segregation and differentiation a power which would not accrue to a mere random sample of two million persons similarly located but not perceived or perceiving themselves as distinct from the rest.”

LA replies:

That’s a profound point.

I was not aware that Powell had written something called “The Road to National Suicide”!

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 14, 2009 11:50 AM | Send