Trail of terror ends with suspect's suicide

The Associated Press

CHICAGO -- The sun set and the Sabbath had just begun as a group of Orthodox Jewish worshipers headed to synagogue. A stranger stepped out of a shiny blue Taurus. Soon, the staccato of gunfire shattered the night, bullets whizzing past one man's head.

The shooter had calmly approached a group of men and boys wearing traditional black hats and long black coats, aimed a pair of semiautomatic handguns and opened fire. He got back into his car and slowly drove through the North Side neighborhood. He turned the corner, shooting two more men. A block south, two more. He drove on a few blocks, stopping three more times, all the time shooting from his car -- shattering the glass on the passenger side. Within 15 minutes Friday night, six Jews were wounded; one was hit in his back as he threw his young son to the ground, then covered him with his own body. The driver was gone -- without uttering a word. Soon police had a sketch: A white man in his 20s, medium build, short, dark brown hair, driving a 1990s-model Taurus. The hunt was on. It was the beginning of what police say was a three-day rampage by a white supremacist who targeted minorities in two states over the Fourth of July weekend; he is suspected of killing a black former basketball coach and a Korean graduate student. It ended Sunday night with a third death on a quiet rural road, 235 miles south of Chicago. This time, authorities say, the person killed was the suspected gunman -- Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, 21. Smith, who had the words "Sabbath Breaker" tattooed across his chest, was well-known to authorities for distributing hate-message leaflets. Marion County sheriff's deputies say they chased Smith after he carjacked a minivan in southern Illinois; he shot himself twice as he was pursued, they say, then a third time -- in the chest -- as he struggled with authorities. "I'm glad it's over," Sheriff Gerald L. Benjamin declared Monday. "I don't know what caused this, but it's very sad." Smith -- who sometimes liked to use the first name "August" because he thought Benjamin sounded too Jewish -- attended the prestigious New Trier High School. His father and mother -- a doctor and a real estate agent -- now live in Northfield in a home with a tennis court and swimming pool. Smith had a troubled past: While attending the University of Illinois, records show he was reprimanded for pot possession; he also put up racist posters and allegedly was peeping into window and carrying weapons. Police said he distributed white supremacist leaflets around the school, Chicago's North Shore, where his family lives, and Indiana University in Bloomington, which he attended as a criminal justice major after leaving Illinois. In fact, he had tucked fliers on car windshields on Bloomington last year. The date?The Fourth of July. It was late Sunday, the end of a weekend of terror. A minivan had been carjacked at a truckstop in southern Illinois, police said, by a man who resembled Smith. A deputy spotted the vehicle. Soon, the chase was on. Smith shot himself three times, the last two while struggling with deputies after he crashed into a small building. The questions of how and why this happened have just begun, but others already see a message in this tragedy. Harlan Loeb, Midwest counsel for the Anti-Defamation League, which has monitored Smith for more than a year, said this incident demonstrates the power of a hateful message. "His rhetoric was fairly inflammatory, but until this episode, it was substantially rhetoric," he said. "What it tells you is the consequences of words can be fairly significant, the consequences of hate and screed can be very, very destructive."

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