Grisly find follows SWAT raid on New Mexico compound where 16 lived in buried RV, truck Trevor Hughes 14 hrs ago
Grandfather: Body at NM Compound is Missing Boy
Video by the Associated Press
AMALIA, N.M. – Tiny pairs of pants, broken-down bikes with training wheels and discarded children’s shoes haphazardly scattered among the homemade-brick walls and a half-buried RV hint at the tragedy and mystery unfolding in this remote community.
Here, down a dirt road scratched through the sagebrush, investigators are trying to piece together why a group of heavily armed Muslims took up residence on property they didn’t own and built a compound from wooden pallets, clear plastic tarps and dirt-filled tires. Investigators also are trying to understand the death of a 3-year-old child, whose body was found buried on the site about four hours south of Denver.
And they’re trying to unravel whether the group had sinister plans after one of the children told authorities he was taught how to fire a rifle in preparation for a school shooting.
All the while, a property owner who says he repeatedly reported the group to authorities is struggling with the guilt that maybe he could have done more – and anger that police didn’t.
“That’s what’s hard, this kid, this innocent child, is now dead,” said Jason Badger, who owns the land where the group illegally built its compound. “Me and my wife hope we did everything we thought we could.”
a close up of a desert: Broken glass embedded in the top of a mud wall built by adults living in a compound in Amalia, New Mexico, fronting a secondary wall made of dirt-filled tires.
1/8 SLIDES © Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY
Broken glass embedded in the top of a mud wall built by adults living in a compound in Amalia, New Mexico, fronting a secondary wall made of dirt-filled tires.
Police have arrested five adults and taken 11 children into protective custody following the discovery of a buried child’s body in the aftermath of an Aug. 4 SWAT raid on the rural property just a stone’s throw from the Colorado border. The 11 kids were in various states of dehydration and emaciation, authorities said.
Police said they intervened after intercepting a message from one of the people in the compound begging for help.
All of the adults face child-abuse charges, and one of the men is also being detained on a December kidnapping warrant from Georgia. He’s accused of spiriting his chronically sick son, Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, across state lines without access to adequate health care. The boy’s body was discovered on the property during a raid by SWAT officers last week. The cause of death has not yet been released.
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Poster Comment:
Can anyone say SNAFU?