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Angry restaurateur had rifle, 200 rounds of ammo for Super Bowl gunfire

MetalChris

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http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs07/news/story?id=3235811&campaign=rss&source=NFLHeadlines

PHOENIX -- A would-be bar owner angry at being denied a liquor license threatened to shoot people at the Super Bowl and drove to within sight of the stadium with a rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition before changing his mind, federal authorities said.

Kurt William Havelock, who ultimately turned himself in, had vowed to "shed the blood of the innocent" in a manifesto mailed Sunday to media outlets, according to court documents. "No one destroys my dream," he wrote.

The documents say he was armed with an AR-15 assault-style rifle Sunday when he reached a parking lot near University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, where pre-game activities were happening.

"He waited about a minute and decided he couldn't do this," FBI agent Philip Thorlin testified at a detention hearing for Havelock on Tuesday.

Havelock's father testified that his son then called his fiancee and met his parents at his condominium in Tempe, like Glendale a Phoenix suburb.

"He was very upset; he was sobbing hysterically," Frank Havelock said. "He said, 'I've done something terribly, terribly wrong.' "

Kurt Havelock, 35, was charged Monday with mailing threatening communications. He is being held without bail, and additional hearings have yet to be scheduled.

Havelock's lawyer, Jeffrey Allen Williams, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Federal authorities say Havelock was upset over being denied a liquor license.

A few months ago, Tempe officials denied Havelock's application for a liquor license for a Halloween-themed bar called The Haunted Castle, city spokeswoman Shelley Hearn said.

Tempe officials never recommended the license to the state liquor board, Hearn said.

"There were some neighbors who came forward and said it wasn't the right business for their part of Tempe," she said. "They'd heard he wanted to call his place 'Drunkenstein's.' "

The FBI said in the complaint that Havelock had planned to attack Super Bowl fans at the stadium in what he called an "econopolitical confrontation."

"I will not be bullied by the financial institutions and their puppet politicians," Havelock wrote in the eight-page manifesto, according to the complaint.

"I will test the theory that bullets speak louder than words. Perhaps the blood of the inculpable will cause a paradigm shift. ... Someone has to start the revolution but no one wants to be first."

Authorities said in the complaint that Havelock first thought of targeting a shopping center in north Phoenix before planning to attack the Super Bowl.

"How many dollars will you lose? And all because you took my right to own a business from me," the manifesto said.
 

deepdiver

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dumbass -- and everyone forgets that even with the 2 actual shootings and this threatened shooting recently, 79,999,997 legal firearm owners did nothing illegal and did not threaten to do anything illegal with their firearms in the same time frame.
 

ace1001

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I think we should remember that the Columbine killers just quit. They lots of ammo and the cops were still guarding the perimeter. They justfound out that watching your classmates die isn't really all that fun. Their lives were going to be incarceration so they chose suicide. This guy was ahead of the curve. His conscience overcame his anger. Just in time. Ace
 

Schofield

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I really despise people like this. Yes, the Second Amendment is meant to protect the other rights... But not at the cost of innocent lives and violating the rights of others like that. And dare I say it, he was too cowardly to even follow it through after writing a manifesto and all? Good God, people are stupid regardless of owning firearms or not.
 

VAopencarry

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May 9, 2006
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Based on his actions it sounds like the liquor board was on the right track by denying his liquor license. If you are going to lose your mind over some real or perceived injustice by a governmental agency, then go kill them not people that didn't have anything to do with it.



Disclaimer: I do not advocate homicide, just if you are going to at least kill the right people. :)
 

Tess

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This is not a story. This is not news. Nothing happened.

The fact that he lost his nerve indicates that not everyone with access to weapons is going to go commit mass murder.

In fact, most of us will NOT. It's been written (and thankfully I've never faced it) most people have difficulty enough when they have to fire.
 
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