Horrible accident in San Diego looks like “sudden jihad syndrome”

Three days ago I saw this news item at the Los Angeles Times blogs about a horrible accident in San Diego:

Twenty-five persons were injured, including a young woman who had her leg severed, when a cabdriver drove onto a sidewalk and smashed into a crowd in San Diego’s Gaslamp District entertainment zone early Saturday, police said.

Twenty-three were taken to hospitals, six reportedly in critical condition. The cabdriver was pulled from his vehicle by the crowd and beaten, suffering a broken nose, police said.

The incident occurred about 2 a.m. at 6th and Island avenues, in the heart of the restaurant and nightclub zone, close to the San Diego Convention Center. The cab crashed into a crowd outside the Stingaree nightclub, which was closing, police said.

The police said the cabdriver did not appear to be drunk and no explanation for his action was offered. He was described as between 40 and 50 years old and driving an Emerald cab.

A cab driver who wasn’t drunk suddenly crashes into a crowd of people on a sidewalk outside a nightclub injuring 25 people? What’s that about? The non-drunkenness suggested the driver was not a Mexican or illegal alien. The sudden driving into the crowd suggested sudden jihad syndrome.

I didn’t get around to posting the item. Then, this morning, I Googled the story again to see if there was any information about the driver. 10 News.com reports that the driver has been identified. He is 52 year old Sam Hassan Daly. Hassan is a Muslim name. Also, his driving into the crowd sounds deliberate:

Police confirmed Daly was the only person in the cab and that he stopped at the stop sign on the corner before driving about 15 miles per hour into the crowd.

Also, people at the scene thought it might be a terrorist attack:

When emergency crews first arrived, they were told to clear the area because of fears that the taxi might have had explosives inside it. A witness reported seeing a bag with wires coming out of it on the taxi’s seats. The bag turned out to be a massager, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The article also reports that the woman with the severely injured leg may not have to have it amputated, though the story is contradictory on that point. There may be another woman who did lose her leg.

I’ve found another item about the cab driver that identifies him as an Egyptian immigrant. It was posted last night at the blog The Political Jungle:

San Diego “Killer” Cabbie A Terrorist?

Interesting … the taxi cab driver, Sam Hassan Daly, who drove into a huge crowd this weekend in downtown San Diego @ the Stingaree night club is an Egyptian immigrant who, according to his roommate, was a nut job. A nut job who’s home was in foreclosure and who was allegedly preparing to return to his homeland in Egypt.

“Dan Rose says he has been living with Sam Hassan Daly for the last two months. Rose says, “he’s a pretty solitary man kind of a recluse I guess you would call it.”

Rose said he feared the 52-year-old Egyptian born cab driver. “Just very irrational behavior, um I don’t know if it was necessarily a terroristic type thing or maybe he’s just imbalanced.”

Rose said Daly called him names and confronted him for bringing a date home.

Rose says Daly gave him his move out notice last Friday. That the home is in foreclosure and Daly was leaving the country and heading back to Egypt.”

Oooohhhhh called this one … when I heard that people pulled the guy out of his cab and kicked the snot out of him I wondered why … what did he say? They are being VERY closed mouth about his whereabouts. Interesting. 35 people were injured, his cab aimed RIGHT AT THEM ALL. No horn, no brakes, nothing.

Posted by Jenn of the Jungle at 2/14/2011 10:16:00 PM

(Note: The Political Jungle is unreadable because the blog consists of dark red text against a dark blue background. I was only able to read it by selecting the text, which made it white.)

- end of initial entry -

Richard W. writes:

You have outdone yourself in demonstrating your extremely droll sense of humor once again.

“The non-drunkenness suggested the driver was not a Mexican or illegal alien.”

I laughed out loud.

LA replies:

Richard, thank you, but I have to tell you, I didn’t intend that as being funny. I thought it was just a straightforward, logical observation.

But this happens to me often. Statements I make that I think are slightly funny, or not funny at all, other people find very funny. (Uh-oh, my enemies are going to go wild over that one.)

Karen from England writes:

You said: “Hassan is a Muslim name.” It is an Arabic name and not specifically Muslim. It is also a Hebrew name and an Irish surname. Hassan is a common name among Mizrahi Jews in the Arab world and Daly is not an Arabic name and certainly not Muslim.

LA replies:

Offhand I’ve never heard of a Jew or an Irishman named Hassan. Hassan, with its closeness to “Hussein,” obviously sounds like a Muslim name. In fact, now that I think about it, in addition to Muhammad’s grandson Hussein, he had another grandson Hassan, Hussein’s brother, so Hassan is certainly a Muslim name.

Furthermore, the surname “Daly” is irrelevant in determining whether or not the man is Muslim. What tells us whether a person is non-Muslim or Muslim is not that part of his name is non-Muslim, but that part of his name is Muslim. If my name were Lawrence Hussein Auster you could logically conclude, in the absence of any other knowledge about me, that I am a Muslim, or at least that I identify myself with Islam and feel close to Islam.

LA continues:

Hassan, one of Muhammad’s two grandsons and also briefly a caliph, is also spelled Hasan. Wikipedia says about him:

Al-Hasan ibn Ali ibn Abu Talib is an important figure in Islam, the son of Fatimah, the daughter of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and of the fourth Caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib…. He briefly succeeded his father Ali ibn Abi Talib as the righteous Caliph following the latter’s death, before retiring to Madinah and entering into an agreement with the first Umayyad ruler, Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan, who assumed the Caliphate. Both Sunni and Shi’a Muslims regard Hasan as a martyr.

Leonard K. writes:

Karen from England wrote:

You said: “Hassan is a Muslim name.” It is an Arabic name and not specifically Muslim. It is also a Hebrew name and an Irish surname. Hassan is a common name among Mizrahi Jews in the Arab world and Daly is not an Arabic name and certainly not Muslim.

Totally irrelevant comment. “Sam” (actually Osama) Hassan Daly from Egypt?

Yes, sure he is a Mizrahi Jew (there are tons of them in Egypt!). No, wait—he is Irish, of course! Don’t you know that Egypt is full of Irishmen?

Ferg writes:

Nice call sir. I wonder what the “Non-Islamic” explanation is going to be. His house was being foreclosed? We all know how that can drive you to murder. Sounds like he didn’t have a girl friend. Could that have been the reason? Or had it been a bad night for business? Hard to say what causes these isolated events.

Alan Roebuck writes:

Karen from England said Hassan is an Irish name. Like Barack Hassan O’Bama?

OK, she said a surname. But why let the facts spoil a good joke? Or a bad joke.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 15, 2011 10:17 AM | Send