shooting by US Army soldier outside of Ft Liberty

[Ivanhoe]

f.k.a. Fort Bragg

https://www.foxnews.com/us/mysterious-shooting-army-special-forces-residence-north-carolina-raises-questions
 

Quote

 

A mysterious shooting in North Carolina north of Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, not far from where some of America’s most elite U.S. Special Operations forces live and train is under investigation by the Army Criminal Investigation Division as well as local police. The shooting in Carthage, North Carolina occurred May 3 at 8:15 p.m. following a phone call about a suspected trespasser near a Special Forces soldier's property.

Two Chechen men who spoke broken English were found near the soldier's home. The family alleges the suspected intruder, 35-year-old Ramzan Daraev of Chicago was taking photos of their children. When confronted near a power line in a wooded part of the property, an altercation ensued and Daraev was shot several times at close range. A second man, Dzhankutov Adsalan, was in a vehicle some distance from the incident and was questioned by authorities and then released. The Moore County Sheriff's office is leading the investigation.

The FBI told Fox News, "Our law enforcement partners at the Moore County Sheriff's Office contacted the FBI after a shooting death in Carthage. A special agent met with investigators and provided a linguist to assist with a language barrier for interviews."

 

I didn't find mention of this in MilCurEvents, apologies if its already been covered.

This tale gets weirder and weirder. Definitely one for PERSEC briefings.

May 3 being a Friday, and the encounter happening at 8:15 in the evening, at first blush one ought to be asking the question "Why are Russian immigrants working for a utilities contractor company out taking photos of power poles near dusk on a Friday night?"

There have been claims the two were illegal immigrants, have not found anything solid on that.

https://www.fayobserver.com/story/news/crime/2024/05/30/calls-released-in-death-of-utility-worker-killed-by-fort-liberty-soldier/73906997007/
 

Quote

 

CARTHAGE — A Carthage woman placed two phone calls to 911 in the minutes before her husband shot and killed a man found taking photos on their rural, wooded Moore County farm May 3.

According to the newly released calls of the confrontation between the special operations soldier and a utility worker, the woman was calm in the first call as she reported her husband was talking to a man they found outside their Dowd Road home. 

In the second call, made 13 minutes later, the woman was panicked, shouting for someone to bring her a rifle and telling the dispatcher the “intruder” was from Chechnya. 

The Moore County Sheriff’s Office said that when deputies arrived at the scene 20 minutes after the initial call, Ramzan Daraev, 35, of Chicago, was dead of gunshot wounds. The shooter, stationed at Fort Liberty, was uninjured. 

 

.

Quote

 

Police and officials at Fort Liberty have declined to release the soldier's name because of his position with the Army's special operations. 

Before the family’s name was redacted from county property records, The Fayetteville Observer identified the property owner as an Army colonel. 

 

It should be noted that the first request to 911 for police happened at 8:12pm, second call at 8:20pm.
 

Quote

 

In a statement released Saturday on its Facebook page, Utilities One confirms Daraev was a contract employee conducting "pole surveys as part of an ongoing engineering design project for deploying fiber infrastructure in Carthage, NC on May 3rd."

"Ramzan Daraev emigrated to the United States from Russia to escape the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. He sought safety and a new beginning in America, away from the threats posed by war. Tragically, his life ended in this unforeseen and devastating manner," the statement reads.

 

For reasons, the "about us" page at utilitiesone.com is 404, and the raw WHOIS shows an anonymous domain registration (a wee bit sketchy for a corporation in the public utilities game).

Apparently the two drove to the location in a personal vehicle, weren't wearing any kind of uniform, and had marginal ID. The guy who wasn't shot was questioned by the Feebies and released. It would seem he brought the camera back to work at some point, as Utilities One published the last photo on the camera (it was a picture of a pole ID plate). Seems safe to assume that any pictures of the Colonel's house and/or family members has long since been deleted.

 

[Ivanhoe]

https://redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2024/05/27/new-info-related-to-shooting-death-of-chechen-national-who-was-on-army-special-forces-soldiers-property-n2174705
 

Quote

 

Since they spoke broken English it's not surprising that the cell phones had Russian language contacts, but there is no reasonable explanation for someone who's supposedly a fiberoptic utility installer taking photos of the soldier's family.

Also, sources in the community tell RedState that "apparently the Colonel had his own cameras up and this was the 3rd or 4th visit" by Daraev and Adsalan and that there have been "a lot of suspect things in the area, family members [of special forces soldiers] followed, et cetera." Footage from the Colonel's cameras could shed a lot of light on what happened not just on May 3rd but also what happened on those other occasions, and if family members of other area soldiers have been followed recently, it's understandable that the Colonel was on heightened alert.

 

As for the provenance of Utilities One;

Quote

The CEO is Serghei Busmachiu, and there are a number of people from Eastern Europe on the executive team, including Alin (Alexandrin) Patron and Dumitru Boscanean. Patron is the registered agent for a number of Utilities One branch corporations.

 

 

 

https://www.foxnews.com/us/mysterious-shooting-army-special-forces-residence-north-carolina-raises-questions

Quote

The shooting incident two weeks ago in Carthage could have been a case of mistaken identity. The two Chechens had no personal identification. They did have two cell phones with Russian language contacts and camera equipment. They were not wearing any uniforms for the power company that reportedly employed them.

 

Quote

 

Sources tell Fox News that "power company employment is often a cover for status/action" that U.S. intelligence agents use for surveillance of foreign targets overseas.

In a separate incident 18 months ago, Moore County experienced another mysterious shooting attack that targeted two electrical distribution substations. Damage from the attack left up to 40,000 residential and business customers without power in North Carolina for nearly 2 weeks. The power outage primarily affected communities heavily populated by U.S. Special Operations families. Less than two weeks prior to the Moore County substation incident, the FBI sent a report to private industry warning of an increase in reported threats to electric infrastructure from people who espouse "racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist ideology." The FBI took over that investigation, which remains unsolved.

 

 

 

Quote

 

This May 3 shooting in Carthage may simply have been a case of mistaken identity, but members of the Special Operations community are asking why two Russian-speaking Chechens were taking photos near an elite Army special forces residence at 8:15 pm on a Friday night some 10 minutes after sunset and why the FBI is not the lead in the investigation.

The FBI tells Fox News the Bureau has not opened a counterintelligence investigation and that, "The local investigation has not uncovered evidence of a federal crime," adding "the FBI is in regular contact with the sheriff's office investigators and are prepared to investigate if a federal matter comes to light."

 

One might think the federal government might check into the immigration status of the two.

Keeping in mind that the Feebies have been taking photos of auto license plates in the parking lot of a Catholic church, their lack of curiosity sure appears to be a dog that didn't bark.

 

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

This is very odd.

There has been increasing concerns here about Russian efforts to undertake sabotage operations across Europe in the aftermath of the decision to allow NATO weapons to hit Russia. I wonder if they are planning something in America?

You are right, it just doesnt smell right.

[Ivanhoe]

I figure one of two possibilities:

1) the company owner chose to take some initiative in order to ingratiate himself with the FSB;

2) the FSB chose him as a sacrificial pawn, simply to test defenses without risking any legit FSB agents.

Tradecraft was too pathetic for it to have been a serious op by any of the main adversary nation intel services.

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

Well, when you look at the Salisbury operation... they are distinctly overrated these days. They were even banging a prostitute the night before they went to Salisbury, and the police managed to track her down. They just seemed to take it for granted nobody would notice them, or that nobody would care.

 

Edited June 4, 2024 by Stuart Galbraith

[Stargrunt6]

20 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Well, when you look at the Salisbury operation... they are distinctly overrated these days. They were even banging a prostitute the night before they went to Salisbury, and the police managed to track her down. They just seemed to take it for granted nobody would notice them, or that nobody would care.

 

Ann Coulter told one of her dad's stories from his FBI days. KGB agents in the 50s would wear bug fur coats in NYC because they thought everyone did there. Sometimes the pros... aren't (hi medicine).

[Stuart Galbraith]

Yes, I entirely believe that.

The KGB had its moments. The work their forebears did in the 1930's and 40's was, to be fair to them, extraordinary. As good as anything Mossad ever did. Their penetration of the Manhatten project and MI6 is a case in point. And those are just the ones we know about.

The problem came partly with the purges (i think one of the recruiters of the Cambridge spies got shot), and that they didnt always trust what they learned. OK, they did with Manhatten and Tube alloys, because the science verified it. But political intelligence, they rarely seem to have accepted, because it contrasted so wildly with their own worldview. Alright, primarily Stalins worldview.

By the 1950's, particularly after 1956, the bloom that hung over Communism, and got so many early spies, was starting to wear off. By the 1970's, when everyone was starting to think the USA was going down the tubes, there was also a cynicism over communism. Fewer spies were recruited for ideological beliefs, many more for monetary or revenge reasons.

That had a knock on effect on the quality of the spies the KGB got as well. Most were in it for a safe career, not ideological reasons, and didnt take chances. There is a very fine book by Oleg Gordievsky on his time as a spy in the Rezidency in London, and its clearly that the vast majority of staff were timeservers whom barely knew the country they were reporting on. His head of station was a borderline alcoholic. He actually had an MI5 agent post letters through his door with evidence of a clear penetration of the KGB, and he rejected it as a clear provocation!

Internal security, they were very, very good at. Much better than Western nations, for obvious reasons.

 

So... lets just say im willing to keep an open mind on this one. After Salisbury, nothing they do would surprise me anymore.

[Ivanhoe]

It has occurred to me that, had the good COL not centerpunched the Russian, authorities would have aggressively ignored the problem.

 

[Ivanhoe]

Another thing is the question of how said Russians were able to identify a COL in the SF community, and his residence. Some SF types have "dual personas" i.e. a regular Army persona with their real name, and a second persona that they use in sneaky squirrel mode. Or so I hear.

I've always assumed that there have been traitors within DOD and the federal LE community, this case seems to support that.

[rmgill]

The KGB recruited communists who were already well placed in many cases no? 

[Ivanhoe]

17 minutes ago, rmgill said:

The KGB recruited communists who were already well placed in many cases no? 

Mostly they recruited communists before they were well-placed.

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

1 hour ago, Ivanhoe said:

Mostly they recruited communists before they were well-placed.

 

Thats what they did with the Cambridge spies. One reason why subsequently MI5 kept a close watch on British universities. There was some evidence that the East Germans tried to recruit university lecturers subsequently as talents spotters.

This is the weakness the Russians have today, they dont have an ideology that anyone other than somene whom is already Russian would find anyway attractive. So I guess its not surprising if they keep hiring Ensign Expendibles, otherwise known as Chechens.

Odd story. One wonders how the wife knew he was from Chechnyia? Did the husband speak the lingo?

 

[rmgill]

Why would an Army Colonel in Special Forces know what Chechin’s sound like? 
 

🤔

[Ivanhoe]

9 minutes ago, rmgill said:

Why would an Army Colonel in Special Forces know what Chechin’s sound like? 
 

🤔

https://www.dliflc.edu/

Many soldiers in SF, and most soldiers in MI, go to DLI. And spend time overseas.

 

[rmgill]

Exactly!