Crime In A Neighboring County
The arrest of Okaloosa County’s Sheriff pushed a local shooting quickly to the back pages of the Local Puppy Trainer, but it was picked up by Latin American media because the victims were Chilean.
Panama City TV was probably the first to run the item:Early Morning Shooting Kills 2 Injures 3 in Miramar Beach. Then a story ran in the Panama City paper owned by the same group as my local paper: Chileans mourn students killed in S. Walton shootings. From a later edition you get the local version of the crime of Dannie Roy Baker. Finally the Keyboard Detective waded in with more details.
The basic story is that a Miramar Beach man, Dannie Roy Baker, opened fire with a rifle at a group of Chilean students leaving a party at about 1:45AM on Thursday morning, 26 February. Two Chileans were killed and three were wounded.
Mr. Baker then returned to his own house in the subdivision, and eventually surrendered at 6AM to a force that contained Walton County deputies supported by SWAT teams from Okaloosa and Santa Rosa county. Mr. Baker has said nothing to the police.
If you wade through sufficient links you discover that the 60-year-old Mr. Baker is seemingly the black sheep of a Montgomery, Alabama family from whom he is estranged. He volunteered for the Walton County GOP, until they felt he had gone a bit extreme. He doesn’t like liberals or immigrants.
In the next layer you learn that while he is listed as pastor for his own church, there is no indication that he has ever had a steady job. That makes his ownership of a townhouse in a Miramar Beach subdivision a bit of a puzzle. It is not exactly a low rent area; the median income is 50% higher than the county average.
From my knowledge of the way things work down here, I would guess that Mr. Baker’s family bought him the townhouse with the clear understanding that he not come home. This is not exactly an uncommon practice. Many of those who have encountered him over the years have expressed the opinion that he has major psychiatric issues, and there are indications that he is receiving disability payments. The problem for law enforcement is that they require some proof that he is a danger to himself or others before they can invoke a forced commitment under the Baker Act. His family is in a much better position to have him committed, but they, obviously don’t want to deal with the problem. I fully expect he will have private counsel before this is over, and he will be committed.
The other thing that is not really being covered is the first time the Chileans were victimized. Much has been made of the fact that the people who were attacked were in the US legally under a work/study program. I have personal experience with this program, which is often a fraud. The students are recruited in their home countries for specific jobs in the US under an established program, but are unpleasantly surprised when they arrive: the jobs don’t exist. They are then offered alternative employment. This is how a student who was told she would be working at a hotel in New Orleans wound up working at a McDonalds in Destin, Florida. This pattern is entirely too common in the local area for it to be anything but a scam. The students aren’t doing anything wrong, but they aren’t getting the job experience they planned on, and they are not getting the wages they agreed to when they joined the program.
4 comments
Bryan :
Excellent Post – I linked this page of yours from my site.
I thank the useful information and opinion. The worst enemies of the USA are Hate TV and Hate Radio and the Politicians that kneel before their stupidity.
The USA can not be destroyed from Outside, the Inside enemies are very dangerous with their preaching of Hate and Racism.
I have devoted myself to the task of profiling the criminals in Racial Murders. And I try to gather as much information as possible on what happened. Also to remember the victims.
Here is the result :
Raciality.com
Vicente Duque
The American South doesn’t need any outside help when it comes to racism, Vicente, and I think the fact that Baker rented rooms to Russians in the WAT program, makes it obvious that this was about race. Miramar Beach is 97% white according to the census, which is rather remarkable in this part of Florida. I doubt that it is an accident or related to the cost.
He knew about the WAT program, and therefore knew the Chileans weren’t undocumented.
Bryan,
Good Post.
I agree. It is obvious Baker was mentally ill and his parents caste him off to let the rest of us deal with their problems.
The issue, however, is what Baker said. From the news articles he said to his neighbor, “are you ready for the revolution to begin and do you have any immigrants in your house. If so, get them out.”
He did not have a problem with Russian (read “white”) immigrants. A commenter who boarded with Baker said on KeyboardDetective that Baker went to a dating website because he wanted to marry a Russian immigrant.
Baker only had a problem with those he thought were illegal immigrants (read “Latino”). Then he talked to his neighbor about the upcoming “revolution.” The Hatred for Illegal Immigrants and talk of the Revolution are all soundbytes from ANTI Immigration websites and extremist Right Wing media (Dobbs, Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck). They are just as culpable for these crimes as Baker.
The weak minded, like Baker or like the high school students that labeled themselves the Caucasian Crew that murdered Marcelo Lucero in Long Island in November, or the high school jocks who murdered Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, PA for being Mexican last August, are all listeners of the right wing rhetoric and acted out their support when they murdered their innocent victims.
The HATE TALK needs to stop! Before more innocent victims are murdered.
Dee
http://immigrationmexicanamerican.blogspot.com/
Baker was born in a segregated South and grew up in that environment. “Immigration” is just cover for the racism that is at the bottom of his problems. He knew the Chileans weren’t undocumented, because he was totally familiar with the WAT program.
The man is a racist apart from being mentally ill. He didn’t need anyone to feed his demons. All the ‘immigration debate” did was allow him to openly express his racism without being condemned publicly.