Fresno police say the man suspected of going on a murder spree Tuesday morning is cooperating with their investigation. Kori Ali Muhammad has walked police step-by-step through the process of how he killed three people and is showing no remorse for his crimes.
Chief Jerry Dyer on Wednesday explained to members of the media a second-by-second breakdown of the rampage that left three men dead, including playing recordings of the gunshots captured on police tracking equipment.
Dyer says this all began with a murder last Thursday night at a motel where he allegedly killed a security guard for unspecified ‘disrespect’.
Muhammad watched police investigate that murder overnight from the rooftop of a nearby gas station. He climbed down the next day and hid out while performing what he called Voodoo rituals.
When the man learned Tuesday morning that he was the suspect in the motel murder case, Dyer says he decided to murder as many white men as he could in a form of racial retribution.
“What he told our detectives last night, was that once he saw he was wanted for the murder he was not going to go down for shooting a security guard for disrespecting him. That he was going to kill as many white males as possible. And that is what he set out to do that day,” Dyer says.
Dyer says Muhammad fired a total of 16 shots. The first four killed 34-year old PG&E worker Zachary Randalls who was in a truck on Van Ness. He then fired two shots at but missed another white male. He also fired one shot at a car before realizing it contained Hispanic women.
The final two victims were 37-year old Mark Gasset who was standing in front of a home on Fulton Street. And 58-year old David Jackson, who was waiting with two other men at a bus stop also on Fulton. Dyer says in both of the final two murders Muhammad stood over the men firing shots directly into their bodies.
The entire course of events lasted last than four minutes.
Having run out of ammunition, Muhammad gave himself up to the first officer he saw.
Dyer says Muhammad claims he did so out of respect for the officer and to show the courage of conviction for his alleged crimes and the reasoning behind them.
“Kori Muhammad is a very calloused individual. When he was taking our police officers, our detectives, to various locations to last night and yesterday. As he spoke about the shootings and shooting individuals he sometimes laughed as he described what transpired,” Dyer says.
Dyer says Muhammad calls himself Muslim but also said he claims to pray to seven different gods. He was allowed to speak to his mother and told her not to worry about him because his ‘magic’ is strong. He re-iterated that Muhammad says he was motivated by a hatred of white men and not religion.
Dyer says it is extremely rare for a suspect to be so forthcoming about potential crimes.
“It is very rare for individuals to cooperate to this degree. There are a lot of reasons why he did it. I just believe that he was OK with what he had done. Whether or not he was proud of it? It appears that he was. He set out to fulfill a mission and he fulfilled it,”
Police are still looking for the murder weapon which Muhammad apparently gave to an unidentified stranger he encountered as he fled the scene.
