On April 18, 2017, a racially motivated shooting spree occurred in Fresno, California, leaving three white people dead. The gunman, Kori Ali Muhammad, a black supremacist, was convicted of four murders and four attempted murders. Muhammad said he went on his shooting spree because of his hatred for white people and particularly white men. Muhammad fired off 17 shots, shooting and killing three men, shooting at and missing another three men, and shooting at a vehicle with passengers inside. The passengers of the vehicle were unharmed. All of Muhammad's victims were white.
Prior to engaging in the shooting spree, Muhammad shot a security guard dead at a Motel 6 on April 13. On his social media posts, police stated that Muhammad made posts of him hating white people and expressing anti-government views. Muhammad shouted, "Allahu Akbar" (translated as "God is the greatest" in Arabic) when he was apprehended; however, police determined that the crime was not due to religious extremism and categorized it instead as a hate crime. Muhammad was not affiliated with any terrorist groups. Kori Muhammad was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Timeline of events
Motel 6 shooting
At approximately 11:00 p.m. on April 13, an unarmed security guard working at a Motel 6 in central Fresno, California observed a man, Kori Ali Muhammad, visiting a woman who had checked into one of the rooms. Since motel policy mandated all visitors to provide identification at the office, the guard went to the room, with an armed coworker, to inform the pair of this. As the guard was escorting Muhammad and the woman to the motel office, an argument erupted between the guard and the woman. As the guard conversed with the woman, Muhammad walked a few steps away from the guard and then turned around and pulled out his handgun. Muhammad fired multiple shots at the unsuspecting guard, killing the security guard at close range. The guard was identified as Carl Williams. Muhammad's shooting of Williams was captured on the motel Wireless security camera. Muhammad also fired several shots toward the motel and at another security guard before fleeing. That guard was uninjured.
Manhunt
The woman, who had fled back to the room, was taken into custody on a felony accessory charge after attempting to take evidence from the crime scene and refusing to identify the gunman to police. According to investigators, the gunman escaped police detection at the motel by fleeing south to a nearby 7-Eleven and hiding out on the store rooftop, where he watched officers interview witnesses and waited for them to leave. Once they left the next morning, he got off of the rooftop, went to a nearby elementary school, and hid by a dumpster. He then traveled around Fresno over the weekend, changing his appearance by cutting his hair.
On April 18, Fresno police identified one suspect in the shooting, 39-year-old Kori Ali Muhammad (see below). He was a friend of the daughter of the woman at the hotel. On the same morning, while out to purchase items for use in "voodoo rituals," Muhammad went to a Starbucks coffee shop. He used the shop's Wi-Fi to watch a broadcast by Fresno ABC affiliate KFSN-TV that identified him as a suspect in the security guard's murder.
Downtown shootings
After being identified as a suspect in Williams' murder, Muhammad decided that he would not "go down for one murder" and that he "might as well take out as many white men" as he could. Hours after the identification, several shootings were reported in downtown Fresno. Muhammad first approached a Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) utility truck at approximately 10:45 a.m. and fired four shots into it, critically wounding an employee seated in the passenger seat. The passenger of the vehicle was identified to be Zachary Randalls. The driver of that truck was spared from being shot, since Muhammad deemed him Hispanic and thus non-white. The driver managed to drive away unharmed and took Randalls to the Fresno Police Department headquarters, where he alerted officers. Randalls was taken to Community Regional Medical Center, where he later died.