There was a hate crime in Tucson, Arizona, on Monday. Two gay men at a bar were gunned down; the suspect had a list of other gay establishments around the city, so this has become a hate crime investigation. Two things will ensure this story is suffocated with a pillow.
The first is the most obvious: there are a lot of national stories dropping, including the new Venezuela oil deal, Canada freaking out over Lake Ontario’s name change, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, Lindsay Clancy, and the upcoming GOP midterm convention in Dallas, Texas.
The second reason is the real reason why this story will be lost: the suspect was black, and as of now, there’s no evidence that he was a MAGA supporter. You know the game. If this were a white conservative Republican, many minutes would be devoted to this, part of the ongoing white supremacist and anti-LGBT terrorism that the Trump administration supposedly executes daily. The suspected shooter is also dead, having been taken into custody with gunshot wounds and later dying at the local hospital. We do not know if the wounds were self-inflicted (via NYT):
Two men were killed outside a gay bar in Tucson, Ariz., early Monday morning in a shooting that the police are investigating as a possible hate crime.
A gunman confronted and then shot the two victims in the parking lot of Venture-N, a bar in midtown Tucson, the police said. The authorities identified the two people killed as Vincent Anthony Siqueiros, 42, and Cameron Davis Capara, 33, who were pronounced dead at the scene.
The suspect, identified as Ousman Ceesay, 44, also had gunshot wounds when the police arrived at the bar around 12:30 a.m. on Monday, the authorities said, adding that he died shortly after arriving at a nearby hospital. It was not immediately clear if his wounds were self-inflicted.
Mr. Ceesay was in possession of a note that listed several L.G.B.T.Q.-associated businesses that he may have been targeting, the police said. After the shooting, they increased patrols around L.G.B.T.Q. venues across the city, they said.
He had an address in Oklahoma City, according to public records, and had no criminal history beyond a speeding ticket in 2012. In 2018, he and his then-wife filed for bankruptcy, court records show. Attempts to reach her were unsuccessful. The petition stated that Mr. Ceesay was briefly employed as an Uber and Lyft driver.
Mayor Regina Romero of Tucson called Monday’s shooting a “direct and devastating attack on our L.G.B.T.Q. community” in a video statement she posted on social media. “This tragedy is another painful reminder that homophobia is still rampant in our country,” she added.
Monica Prieto, chief of the Tucson Police Department, said in a statement that “bias-based crimes are especially heinous and have no place in our community.”
It was later confirmed on Wednesday that the shooting was officially classified as a hate crime.
But the suspect was not white, so this gets buried six feet under.