A Jammed Rifle and a Coworker Who Listened: Police Say Teen Plotted Massacre at Illinois Hindu Temple
Police say a self-described neo-Nazi sat outside an Aurora, Illinois, Hindu temple with a rifle that jammed. A coworker's call stopped him.
On Sunday, Oct. 11, a Hindu temple in Aurora, Illinois, identified by ABC7 Chicago as the Balaji Temple, was busy with worshippers on the first day of the Hindu festival of Navratri. Police say a 19-year-old sat in the parking lot with an AR-style rifle, planning to kill as many of them as he could. Police say the gun jammed and he drove home, and a coworker he told about it called the police. He has not been convicted of anything.
Alexandros Paporakis of Palatine, Illinois, is charged with making a terrorist threat and unlawful possession of a weapon, the BBC reported. The FBI is reviewing whether federal charges should be filed, ABC7 Chicago reported.
What police say happened
Palatine Police Chief Bill Nord said a car registered to Paporakis entered the temple parking lot at about 12:25 p.m. and left at 12:38 p.m., according to ABC7. Police say he tried to open fire, but the rifle jammed, so he drove back to the home he shared with his mother, the BBC reported. There, according to NBC Chicago as cited by the BBC, he searched online for how to unjam the gun and called a coworker to tell him he intended to carry out a mass shooting.
That coworker, who worked with Paporakis at a Taco Bell, alerted police. Investigators arrested him at his Palatine home. Police said they found an AR-style rifle with no serial number, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a tactical vest, a gas can and items with Nazi symbols.
They also found an eight-page manifesto that police say described an attack he had been planning for two years and revealed disdain for South Asians and other ethnic groups. According to CBS, cited by the BBC, he described himself in it as a "sociopathic white supremacist neo-Nazi." Police believe he acted alone and say there is no further threat. He is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois said he and his family were at the temple that day, ABC7 reported. "My parents had been there the entire day and little did we know someone with such sinister intent was sitting in the parking lot lying in wait," he said. The temple has added armed security from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Aurora has increased patrols at houses of worship.
Worshippers say they will not be driven away. "We need to stay strong, and we need to celebrate our culture even if there are people in this world that don't think that we should," said Anurathi Madasi, whose family attends the temple.
A Christian answer to hatred
Christians do not share the beliefs of our Hindu neighbors. We believe Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father (John 14:6), and we will not pretend otherwise. But that conviction is exactly why we must say without hesitation that what police describe here is evil.
Every man, woman and child in that temple was made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Racial hatred is a lie about who God made. "And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth" (Acts 17:26). The ideology police say they found in that manifesto, white supremacy and Nazism, is a rebellion against the Creator. No Christian should give it an inch.
Religious liberty is not a privilege Christians claim only for ourselves. American believers have fought hard for the right to worship freely, and that right means nothing if it belongs only to the majority. A man who would shoot Hindus at prayer would shoot Christians at prayer, and every congregation in America knows that is not a theory. We have mourned shootings in our own churches. This week, Bend, Oregon, began mourning children killed at school, and Dock Line asked readers to weep with those who weep. We should stand with our neighbors in Aurora now.
He told someone, and someone listened
The most important person in this story may be a Taco Bell employee whose name we do not know. When a coworker said something chilling, he did not laugh it off or scroll past it. He called the police. Krishnamoorthi thanked "the coworkers who sounded the alarm."
That is what loving your neighbor looks like in practice. "Deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain" (Proverbs 24:11). If someone tells you he plans to hurt people, take him at his word and tell the authorities.
Thank God for a jammed rifle and a coworker who listened. Pray for the worshippers of Aurora, who now go to their temple past armed guards. And pray for this young man, who by his own alleged words had given himself to hatred. Christ came for people like him too.
Hero photo: BRPever / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Generic image; not the Aurora temple.
