Serial stabber turns out to be a born again, tea partier

Well if you were to follow network news he would be............

FLINT, Mich. — The arrest of a suspect in a three-state stabbing spree that left five people dead and 13 others wounded has eased some but not all fears in Flint, where the attacks have changed the way some residents of one of Michigan’s toughest cities view helping others.

The Flint stabbings started in May, with the attacker approaching men on lonely roads at night and asking for directions or help with a broken-down car. Then he would pull out a knife, plunge it into his victim and speed away.

Even if the assaults are over, at least some fear remains in Flint, the battered industrial city where most of the stabbings, including all five deaths, occurred…

Elias Abuelazam, 33, was arrested Wednesday night in Atlanta before a flight to Israel, his native country, and charged with attempted murder in a July 27 knife strike in Flint that put the victim in a hospital for a week.

So it is not until the fourth paragraph that we learn Mr. Abuelazam is not a native American. Note that the AP refrains from telling us his ethnic background, leaving us to assume he is of the Jewish persuasion.

Authorities said more charges were expected in Michigan, Ohio and Virginia.

Abuelazam is being held at the Fulton County, Ga., jail awaiting an extradition hearing in the next few days. It was not known if he had an attorney.

"We will be methodical and thorough in our continuing investigation and prosecution. … You have real people who have died, real families who have been torn apart," Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton said Thursday.

A tip — one of more than 500 — led police this week to a market in Mount Morris Township, outside Flint, where Abuelazam had worked for a month. Investigators talked to employees, and a store video showed that he matched the description of the man wanted by authorities.

Abuelazam, however, was gone: He told people he was off to Virginia and hadn’t been seen since his Aug. 1 shift.

Police in Arlington, Va., stopped him for a traffic offense Aug. 5 and arrested him on a 2008 misdemeanor assault charge from Leesburg, Va., where he had lived and worked in the mental-health field. A hammer and a knife were found inside the Chevrolet Blazer, which was returned to him after his brief detention. There was no national alert for Abuelazam or his vehicle.

"They had no idea at that time that he was involved in these crimes," Leyton said of Virginia authorities.

Abuelazam eventually returned to Michigan, obtained a $3,000 ticket to Tel Aviv from his uncle and made it as far as Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, where officers snatched the man in flip-flops and shorts after he was paged over the intercom.

Passengers on the Delta Air Lines flight were stunned but said Abuelazam appeared tense. He was talking to someone on his cell phone "about not being violent and different things like that," passenger Eugene Williams said after the plane landed in Tel Aviv.

Leyton would say only that "technology" was used to track Abuelazam outside Michigan.

Abuelazam, an Israeli citizen who is in the U.S. with a green card, was living in Flint, where his uncle owned two adjacent homes. Leyton said evidence was removed, but he declined to describe it.

In the fourteenth paragraph, we learn that Mr. Abuelazam was an legal alien resident in this country. (According to other reports, he was married an American citizen in 2004, who he divorced three years later.)

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