Gay Drunk Racist Tulsa Man Murders Lebanese Neighbor, Nothing To See Here

Keeping Oklahoma safe for Western Culture

Might be time to get the bunny and kitten photos ready, guys, because we have another one of THOSE stories: In Tulsa, Oklahoma, Friday, a racist old shithead shot and killed Khalid Jabara, his 37-year-old next-door neighbor, for the crime of being from Lebanon. Vernon Majors, 61, had been harassing the Jabara family for years before he shot and killed Khalid; last year, Majors had badly injured Khalid's mother, Haifa Jabara, in a hit-and-run attack while driving drunk. Somehow, Majors bonded out in May of this year while awaiting trial, and of course he had a gun, because why would anyone ever think to take the man's gun away? He needed to protect himself, even though in 2013 Ms. Jabara had gotten a protective order against Majors. Remember, the NRA won't let us take guns away from stalkers, because Thomas Jefferson died on the cross for their right to carry.

There is so much fucked up about this story we can barely type it up, kids. You've got Oklahoma's perpetual fear of Sharia, Oklahoma's love of guns, and good old Islamophobia -- although in fact the Jabaras are Christians, not that such minor distinctions mattered to Majors. Besides, maybe they're lying about being Christian, the way Muslims are all commanded to do. 

Majors moved in next to the Jabaras at some point in 2012 or 2013, and by August 2013 Haifa Jabara had already filed a restraining order against him, complaining that Majors had

“harassed” and “stalked” her by “knocking at windows late at nite, harassing me with ugly sex words over the phone, taking pictures and harassing my helper in garage.

“He is very racist towards foreigners and blacks,” she wrote.

Majors then filed his very own restraining order against Khalid, accusing him of vandalism, harassment, and of trespassing -- by allegedly leaving notes on his door. He also accused Khalifa of "e-mail threats and blackmail." So, you know, both sides do it, man. In March of 2015, Majors was arrested for violating the order against him:

“F— you and I want to kill you,” Majors told Haifa, according to a police report. “Jabara also stated to officers that Majors said multiple racial slurs to her today in her driveway.”

Majors, who the report said was intoxicated and “chugged his beer” instead of putting it down, was also charged with obstructing police.

So he sounds nice. Clearly just a good old boy driven mad by the presence of foreigns. In a Facebook post, Khalid's sister, Victoria Jabara Williams, wrote that Majors

repeatedly attacked our ethnicity and perceived religion, making racist comments. He often called us “dirty Arabs,” “filthy Lebanese,” “Aye-rabs,” and “Mooslems”—a fact highlighted by the Tulsa Police Department who also heard these comments from the suspect. The suspect’s bigotry was not isolated to us alone. He made xenophobic comments about many in our community -- “filthy Mexican” and the “n” word were all part of his hateful approach to anyone from a different background.

Then on September 12, 2015, Majors got his drink on and upped his game, the way any proud defender of American Values would: He ran over Haifa Jabara with his car. She suffered a broken arm, broken nose, and "road rash all over her body," according to a police report, which doesn't exactly sound like it was too worried about medical terminology. Khalid informed police of the long-running harassment and the protective order, and they located Majors in a nearby apartment complex:

"[Majors] was extremely drunk and urinating, without the use of his hands, through his open pants,” according to an incident report.

“Is she ok? Haifa?” Majors said, according to the police report. “I was out driving my car, drunk. I’m always drunk and you guys never stop me. And there was this rabbit, and Haifa jumped out in front of my car.”

“Majors went on to repeat this with variations including that he ‘hit her’ and ‘I left because I was scared,'” the officer wrote in the report. Police found his car with its windshield shattered and “what appeared to be blood or tissue stuck on it.” [...]

Questioned after the hit-and-run, “Majors remarked that Mrs. Jabara and her family were filthy Lebanese and they throw gay people off roof tops,” another officer wrote.

Darn those police -- it's their fault for never catching Majors when he's out drinking and driving and a woman he hates happens to be in the road. Majors was charged with "assault and battery with a deadly weapon, leaving the scene of a collision involving injury, violating a protective order and public intoxication," according to the Washington Post. The Tulsa World reports the Jabara family had also filed a civil lawsuit against Majors, seeking damages of $600,000. In her Facebook post, Victoria Jabara Williams said the hit-and-run should have been treated as a hate crime, given Majors's long history of slurs and harassment.

On May 25 of this year, Majors was released on a $60,000 bond, which makes all kinds of sense. No one apparently thought to look into whether Majors owned a gun; the L.A. Times notes Majors had a 2009 felony conviction for making threats, and so even under Oklahoma law he shouldn't have had a firearm. Guess gun control is useless! Or maybe universal background checks might have made it harder for him to own a gun, we said naively.

The Times story also says court records "indicate that Majors was extradited to California in 2013, but he returned to Oklahoma and got married to another man there in 2014." It would be very irresponsible to speculate whether the rightwing rhetoric about the need for gays to hate Muslims after the Pulse nightclub massacre may have played a role in Majors's warped thinking.

On Friday, Khalid Jabara called police to report that Majors was armed; according to the Facebook statement by his sister, "The police came and told him there was nothing to be done." Shortly afterward, Khalid stepped outside to check the mail and Majors shot him, fatally wounding him. According to the Tulsa World,

Police found Majors hiding behind a tree at the nearby Hardesty Library [...] and he is now held without bail at the Tulsa Jail on complaints of first-degree murder and possession of a firearm after a felony conviction.

So, finally some follow-up on that gun. And even some second thoughts about the wisdom of letting Majors return to live next door to the lady he tried to kill with his car -- good going, Tulsa justice system!

“This certainly is a tragedy … but this is not a whodunit,” Tulsa Police Sgt. Dave Walker told The Washington Post, citing one eyewitness account as well as the history of problems between Majors and his Lebanese neighbors.

What is a mystery, at least to the Jabara family, is why Majors was released from jail 10 weeks ago [...]

Police confirmed that Khalid Jabara had called 911 minutes before the shooting. Officers responded to a report of someone knocking on the Jabaras’ windows but did not question Majors and left at 6: 40 p.m. — just eight minutes before the attack, Walker told The Post.

The sergeant acknowledged that the killing raised questions about how authorities handled the neighborhood feud.

“The Constitution allows for people to bond out,” Walker told The Post. “That said, certainly, knowing what we know today, decisions would be made differently.”

So that's nice to know. Maybe something to clip and tape to the door of the ol' courthouse refrigerator. Prosecutors have not yet decided whether Majors will be charged with a hate crime this time, either.

Given Oklahoma's several years of superheated paranoia over Islam, we'll be sickly fascinated to see how Majors's trip through the judicial system turns out. No doubt everyone in a position of authority will condemn him for shooting a Christian instead of a Muslim, and most, we hope, will even say shooting Muslims is bad, except in self-defense when they're about to do jihad on you. Then again, this is a state that keeps reelecting state Rep. John Bennett, who in 2014 warned Muslims are all just waiting for the chance to behead Christians and called Islam "a cancer in our nation that needs to be cut out." Our guess is that the Muslim-haters will explain Majors was a crazy person who doesn't at all reflect the views of Patriots, since he shot the wrong kind of Arab, but that's no reason not to remain vigilant and buy more guns. They'll also call media attention to the murder a distraction from the very real threat Muslims pose to America.

As for keeping guns out of the hands of violent crazy people who shouldn't have them in the first place, there's simply nothing to be done. It was already illegal for Majors to have a gun, so the fact that he got one anyway proves tighter background checks can't possibly help.

[ WaPo / LAT / Tulsa World ]