COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Leaving Military: Veterans
Soldier: Taunts lead to shooting of student
DAVID SIMPSON, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
March 17, 2007
Spc. Craig Perkins' uniform made him a target in Baghdad and, he
believes, again in an apartment complex near Clarkston.
Perkins, who returned last summer after almost a year's duty in Iraq,
shot a man outside his apartment March 9 in what he says was the
culmination of months of insults by some of his neighbors from the
Middle East.
Perkins, 34, said some residents in the ethnically diverse Kristopher
Woods Apartments taunted him and made spitting sounds when they saw him
in uniform heading to or from National Guard duty.
Now Perkins is moving. He said he did not want more conflicts.
Perkins said he shot 26-year-old Tareq Ali Bualsafared in self-defense
after Bualsafared and another man threatened him. He said the two men
rushed toward his front door even after he fired a warning shot.
Bualsafared, a college student from the United Arab Emirates, said
Perkins was the aggressor. He said Perkins cursed them.
Bualsafared, who was shot in the leg, said neither he nor his friend,
Saleh Ali, a 17-year-old refugee from Iraq, knew anything about Perkins
before he confronted them as they walked by his apartment.
In interviews Friday, the accounts of Perkins and Bualsafared agreed on
one detail: There were angry words about Iraq before shots were fired.
Perkins moved in with his girlfriend and her son in the apartment
complex south of Clarkston in the summer of 2006. He had just spent
almost a year in Baghdad with the Georgia-based 48th Infantry Brigade.
He served most of his time as a "ground pounder" a soldier who
traveled in Bradley armored vehicles, conducting patrols and manning
observation posts in Baghdad.
His Bradley once hit an improvised explosive device, he said, filling
the vehicle with smoke. His company was spared combat deaths during his
tour, he said, but after his return he was horrified to learn from CNN
that an Army friend had been kidnapped and beheaded.
In the Clarkston area, Perkins joined a community heavily populated by
refugees of violent conflicts around the world. He quickly noticed
attire and customs he had seen in Baghdad.
He said he had no animosity for his Middle Eastern neighbors in
Clarkston. "I've never been a prejudiced person," he said.
He noted he is a black man with a white girlfriend. He said he has
white
and American Indian ancestors.
But he said he could feel the animosity when he walked by his Middle
Eastern neighbors in his Guard uniform.
Women and older men tended to be polite, but the younger men were
hostile, he said.
On many occasions, he said, he received signs of disrespect he knew
from
Iraq. Men made exaggerated spitting noises, and "they would raise their
shoe at me to show me the bottom of their feet, or they would take off
their shoe and wave it at me."
Perkins said that before last week's shooting, he had never seen
Bualsafared or Ali, neither of whom lived in the apartment complex. But
he believes others helped prod the men to come to his apartment looking
for a fight.
In a telephone interview, Bualsafared said he and Ali were simply out
for a walk with two women when they passed through Perkins' apartment
complex. He and Ali told police Perkins came out of his apartment and
confronted them for allegedly looking at him or his girlfriend.
"How would I know he was a soldier? I didn't know that until he told me
before he shot me," said Bualsafared, a former DeKalb Technical College
student who said he was visiting friends in Clarkston on spring break
from his current studies at Penn State University.
Perkins, however, said a group of three men and a woman originally
walked by him as he walked his girlfriend and her son to their car. He
said he could hear people muttering obscenities and saying "there he
is."
Perkins said he locked his girlfriend and her child in the car and went
to get his gun. Both he and Bualsafared agree the group then left the
area.
Perkins said two men returned and rushed him; Bualsafared said he and
Ali were leaving in separate cars, but Ali stopped and got out when
Perkins cursed at him.
In an argument that followed, Perkins said, he yelled "Soldier in the
U.S. Army." Bualsafared said Perkins said, "I'm a soldier in the U.S.
Army, I just came from Iraq," and Ali angrily replied, "I'm from Iraq."
Perkins said Ali said something about being an Iraqi and said he wasn't
afraid of Perkins' .45 caliber automatic pistol.
Bualsafared said Perkins then fired. Perkins said he warned the men to
stop and fired a warning shot, but they ran toward him until he fired
several shots. He said Bualsafared made it to his front steps, a few
feet from his door.
Bualsafared said the men were in the parking lot when Perkins shot him.
DeKalb police spokesman Michael Payne said a detective's report showed
blood was found "just outside" Perkins' door.
Police at the scene arrested Perkins and charged him with aggravated
assault. But after about 15 hours in jail, he was released when a
magistrate's judge declined to sign a criminal warrant. Perkins is not
now charged with a crime, Payne said.
On Thursday night, Ali was arrested by DeKalb police for criminal
trespass, DeKalb jail records show. The arrest was apparently based on
a
complaint that he should not have been in Perkins' apartment complex at
the time of the incident.
Perkins said he also obtained temporary court orders to keep the men
away from him.
Bualsafared had not been charged Friday, he said. He said he spent a
night in the hospital but was walking on his wounded leg. He was
staying
with a friend in Athens and planned to return soon to Penn State.
Yusof Burke, spokesman for the North Georgia chapter of the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, said he had been asked to look into the
incident on behalf of the Arab men. He said they felt "unjustly
accused."
Burke said he was unaware of Perkins' complaints about rude behavior by
other Arab men in his apartment complex.
"It would be a shame if it did happen that way," Burke said. "If
there's
tensions like that, we'd definitely like to get involved to see what we
can do to help the situation."
For his part, Perkins said he will not return to his girlfriend's
apartment, to avoid another conflict. He is temporarily living with his
mother in Sandy Springs, near his part-time job as a cook at a comedy
club. He and his girlfriend plan to move to another apartment in the
Clarkston area next month.
And he has volunteered to go back to Iraq.
He said joining the National Guard helped him straighten out after a
series of scrapes with the law as a young man.
"I wear my values around my neck," he said, fingering his dog tags and
breaking into tears. "Before, I didn't have any values."
Staff writer Anna Varela contributed to this article.
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