Man Shot at UW No Racist, Friends Insist, Despite Shooter’s Claim
24th January 2017
(Pay attention, there will be a test later.)
The man who surrendered to police in connection with the University of Washington shooting Friday night was released after telling investigators he fired in self-defense during a campus protest, according to two law-enforcement officials briefed on the case.
No details about any confrontation between him and the critically wounded man were available Saturday. But one of the law-enforcement officials said the man who fired the gun claimed he had been assaulted before shooting the other man, whom he believed to be some type of white supremacist.
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Two people who said they are friends with the wounded man disputed the characterization of him as a supremacist. One said his friend supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary, and both said he sports an anti-hate tattoo that consists of a black swastika surrounded by a red circle with a slash through it.
Max Vohra of Seattle, who has known the man for seven years, said his friend got the tattoo more than a decade ago “when he was living in California, and had to deal with a lot of racists in the punk scene.” The idea for the tattoo, Vohra said, came from a NOFX song called “The Brews,” which references “anti-swastika tattoos.”