 Where are those tornados, anyway? Texans crowdsource the news Apr 3rd 2012, 22:21 Two tornadoes touched down south of Dallas catapulting 18-wheelers across the area. Aerials from KXAS. By Isolde Raftery, msnbc.com As dark storm clouds ripped across north Texas on Tuesday afternoon, their destination unclear as they whipped up semi-trucks and uprooted trees, sirens sounded, warning residents that tornadoes approached. But sirens trigger panic more than they inform, so Texans and their family members turned to Twitter and Facebook to express a sentiment best summed up by Khloe Kardashian Odom, the reality TV personality, when she tweeted, “OMG another tornado!!!! What???” Others shared 140-character stories, informing strangers in the comments sections of news sites that their loved ones were safe, or that they had no idea what had happened to them.
Widespread damage is seen from the air and ground in the immediate aftermath of a tornado which tore through neighborhoods and commercial areas. Msnbc's Tamron Hall reports. Joanne Surrency, of Las Vegas, Nev., wrote on Facebook that her brother-in-law works at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. “They all went to bunkers under airport haven’t heard back yet pls pray for everyone in Dallas,” she wrote. Monica Hunter of Grand Prairie, Texas, said that her parents watched the tornado, an impressive funnel of cloud that consumed the sky. They took shelter in a closet, she reported, staying there as the warning sirens wailed. “I pray that everyone will be OK,” she wrote. Minutes later, she logged back on to Facebook. Her parents were fine, she said, and her parents could not spot damage from their home near Bear Creek. Tornadoes pound suburban Dallas Glenn Parker wrote on Facebook that he was at Tarrant County College in Arlington, Texas. There, students were pushed into shelter. The students immediately jumped onto their cell phones, he said. He said one student became so claustrophobic that the school staff allowed him to leave the room. As Arlington School District sent its children into storm shelters, the city of Arlington tweeted an alarming bit of news for people in airtight spaces: There had been reports of ruptured gas lines. The city asked residents to call 911 if they smelled gas. A helicopter over South Dallas, Texas, catches a tornado tearing through neighborhoods. Msnbc's Tamron Hall reports. For those who hadn't yet caught a glimpse of the mayhem, who hadn't even seen golf ball-sized hail, the interest was in figuring out where the tornado had been, where it was now and where it was headed. An NBC Storify news item summed up the news as it happened, providing a hub for the most terrifying videos of the tornado picking up and hurling semi-trucks through the air as though they were toys. Some of the best updates came from the storm chasers – those thrill seekers who line up, bumper to bumper, following the trucks equipped with weather-monitoring devices. Peter Delkus, a forecaster with WFAA.com in the Dallas region, tweeted, “Folks near Forney – take cover! Circulation is increasing and we’ve had reports from storm chasers of a possible funnel cloud.” In response to the storm-chaser tweets, Ben Cantin-Kranz, or @ben_ck, a marketing manager, wrote, “Anyone remember that movie "Twister"? How could it have been better? If storm chasers had twitter!” More content from msnbc.com and NBC News: Follow US News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook | | Police hunt for killers of 3 men at rural North Carolina store Apr 3rd 2012, 21:38 By Kari Huus, msnbc.com Law enforcers in a rural North Carolina community on Tuesday were engaged in an “all hands on deck” manhunt for three suspects who robbed an isolated convenience store and shot to death three young men working there, according to a report from NBC affiliate station WITN. Victims at the Hustle Mart 3 on a sparsely populated county road in Farmville, N.C. -- about one hour south of Raleigh-Durham -- were identified by the sheriff’s office as Nabil Nasser Saeed Al’mogannahi , 26, Gaber Alawi, 24 and Mokbel (Sam) Mohamed Almujanhi, 16. One of the victims was found dead on the scene and the other two later died at a hospital, the local Daily Reflector newspaper reported Tuesday.
The three employees, including the store owner’s teenage son and two cousins, were closing the store when three men with handguns burst in and demanded money, the newspaper reported. After taking an undisclosed amount of cash and a pack of cigarettes, the gunmen shot all three employees, even though they offered no resistance, officials quoted by WITN said. A customer who entered the store at about 10 p.m. found the victims and called 911, WITN reported. Pitts County sheriff Neil Elks said his office has been “all hands on deck” since the shootings which took place, about 10 p.m. Sunday evening, WITN reported. "We have been working this case as hard as we can since Sunday night," Elks told the station. "Our deputies have been canvassing the area, going door to door and following every lead that we have. These are dangerous men we are dealing with, and we are determined to catch them as fast as possible." The department released surveillance photos from the robbery Monday, in an effort to generate tips. The family and Crimestoppers have offered a $10,000 reward for tips leading to arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators. The sheriff's department has received a steady stream of tips since the images and a short portion of the surveillance video were made public, said Christy Wallace, the sheriff's public information director. "It's keeping the detectives adrenalin up and keeping them so encouraged," Wallace said Tuesday evening. "They are still at work right now. Farmville has a population of about 4,500 located and is located about 71 miles east of Raleigh, N.C. Students from Farmville Central High School, where the youngest victim was a 10th-grade student, held a candlelight vigil Monday night outside the store for Almoganahi, who told friends to call him Sam because they had difficulty pronouncing his name. A funeral for the three victims, who were originally from Yemen, was held Tuesday Al-Masjid Islamic Center and Mosque in Greenville, N.C., the Daily Reflector reported. "This is very hard," a spokesman for the family, Tony Muhssen, said during a news conference in Farmville on Tuesday, the Reflector reported. "We lost three. The family just can't understand." More content from msnbc.com and NBC News: Follow US News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook Follow Kari Huus on Facebook |  Oikos University shooting: Private Christian school catered to Koreans Apr 3rd 2012, 20:41  Jeff Chiu / AP An Oakland police officer walks outside of Oikos University in Oakland, Calif., Tuesday, a day after a deadly shooting. By msnbc.com staff, msnbc.com Oikos University, the private college in Oakland, Calif., where authorities say an expelled student methodically gunned down seven people, caters to a fast-growing target market: Korean-American Christians. One L. Goh, 43, a South Korean national, had been a nursing student at Oikos. Oakland police do not have a precise motive yet, but they say the alleged gunman was upset with his former school, where he apparently had been teased over his poor English. He went hunting for a female administrator at the school on Monday and then opened fire on others when he couldn’t find her, according to police. Oikos, a one-building evangelical Christian college in an industrial park near Oakland’s airport, was founded in 2004 by the Rev. Jongin Kim of San Leandro, who remains the school’s president. According to its website, its mission is to “educate men and women to be the leaders to serve the church, local communities, and the world by using their learned skills and professions in the areas of biblical studies, music performance, Asian medicine and practical vocational nursing.”
Oikos awards degrees in nursing, biblical studies, music, ministry, divinity and Asian medicine. It attracts mostly Korean Americans from the Bay Area as well as Koreans from abroad. Tuition runs between $2,200 and $3,100 per semester for most bachelor’s programs and students are required to attend church services. The school is one of about 1,400 institutions licensed by the California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education, established in January 2010 within the Department of Consumer Affairs to oversee private postsecondary schools operating in California. Police: Oikos shooter targeted female administrator Bureau spokesman Russ Heimerich says the state has not received any merited complaints about Oikos. But he says the school’s nursing program, separately accredited by the Board of Vocational Nursing and Psychiatric Technicians, could be in hot water because its pass rate for the nursing exam is well below the state average of 75 percent. (Oikos’ nursing pass rate was 58 percent and 41 percent, respectively, for 2010 and 2011, Heimerich said.) “They are in jeopardy of having their accreditation altered in some way or withdrawn” if the school doesn’t bring up its pass rates, Heimerich told msnbc.com. NBC's Kristen Dahlgren reports. It was not immediately clear how many students attend Oikos. The school's website lists about 50 instructors. Boyung Lee, associate professor of educational ministries at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, says Oikos is among a number of theology-related schools catering to Korean-Americans that have sprung up in Los Angeles, Atlanta, northern New Jersey-New York and other places around the U.S. with sizable Korean-American populations. In South Korea, Christianity is the dominant religion; about 35 percent of the population are either Protestant or Catholic, Lee says. “In Korea getting into college is extremely competitive so a lot of parents send their kids abroad. We have this term called 'goose family,' where the father stays in Korea and makes money while the children and mom are abroad for education,” Lee says. “Every parent wants their children to be fluent in English. Some parents may feel safe if their children are attending a school like Oikos because of its exclusive fundamentalist Christian environment.” Pyong Gap Min, a sociology professor at Queens College in New York, said about 60 percent of Korean immigrants in the U.S. are Protestant. "Korean immigrants have drawn largely from the Protestant segment of the population in Korea and many non-churchgoers in Korea attend Korean churches here," Min told msnbc.com by email. "But Korean protestantism is very interesting because they are heavily evangelically oriented. They have sent about 15,000 missionaries to all over the world. This number is the second largest group in the world next to the U.S." Andrew Sung Park, a professor of theology and ethics at United Theological Seminary in Ohio, told CNN that most of 1.3 million Korean Americans are Christian and they generally subscribe to evangelical Protestantism. "There is a saying that when Koreans get together in the United States, they establish churches first," Park, who is Korean-American, told CNN. "Some other Asians are more concerned with businesses or finances, but Koreans care about religion and about Christianity." Kim, the school’s president, didn’t return media calls Tuesday, and Oakland police said the school is closed indefinitely. According to the Oakland Tribune, Kim is affiliated with the Praise God Korean Church in Oakland and is listed as the president of California Ezra Bible Academy in Sunnyvale. The term "oikos" is ancient Greek for household or family. In a statement on Oikos University's website Kim says the school’s main goal is “to foster spiritual Christian leaders who abide by God’s intentions and to expand God’s nation through them.” The statement adds: “To accomplish our mission, we actively seek out, educate and train students, ministers, teachers and church leaders to become more qualified leaders. Oikos University has rapidly grown in its quality and size to become an institution that contributes to and positively changes their surrounding environment--and the world in general.” The school’s “Doctrinal Statement” lists 11 fundamental beliefs, including the Bible, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Number 11 on the list is Satan: "We believe the existence of a personal, malevolent being called Satan who acts as tempter and accuser, for whom the place of eternal punishment was prepared, where all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity. He can be resisted by the believer through faith and reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit." “I was taken aback by how fundamentalist and conservative these systems are. I assume that those beliefs, doctrines were taught to students,” Lee said. “I wonder whether such a system creates liberation among students.” Msnbc.com's James Eng contributed to this report. More content from msnbc.com and NBC News: Follow US News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook |  'Tremendous damage' as 3 twisters tear through areas near Dallas Apr 3rd 2012, 18:26 By Miguel Llanos and Jim Gold, msnbc.com Updated at 5:40 p.m. ET: At least two tornadoes touched down in areas south of Dallas on Tuesday, tossing tractor-trailers hundreds of feet into the air and causing widespread damage, especially in Lancaster and Arlington. No deaths were reported, but rescuers were still combing debris. As the storm system moved northeast, it later spawned another tornado in Forney, a suburb just east of Dallas, where the fire station and several homes were hit and the high school saw roof damage, NBC News reported. With the storms still moving through the region, many properties were damaged or destroyed and the Dallas Fort-Worth International Airport was hit by large hail, NBCDFW.com reported. More than 225 outbound Dallas flights were canceled, NBCDFW reported. Travelers were taken to shelters as the storms passed. American Airlines canceled all its remaining flights Tuesday to inspect for hail damage. One tornado hit the Flying J Truck Plaza in Dallas, tossing two trucks, said driver Michael Glennon, who caught the destruction on his video camera. "The second trailer is ripped to pieces and thrown 50 to 100 feet into the air," Reuters quoted him as saying.
"This is a serious situation," the NBC affiliate reported over the air at the height of the storms, as meteorologists showed live footage of "debris balls" in Dallas, Ellis, Johnson and Tarrant counties, where officials were trying to get a tally of injuries and damage.  Larry W. Smith / EPA At least two tornadoes hit suburban communities in the Dallas area. Live video showed a huge funnel cloud moving through a populated area as flashes of exploding power lines lit the sky. Vehicles were thrown across a major highway. Large trucks were seen being flung through the air. "There's lots of 18-wheelers," said one NBC 5 reporter near Arlington. "I've never seen this before."  NBC Damaged trucks and trailers are seen after a tornado pased through south Dallas on Tuesday. Arlington's mayor declared a state of emergency, and many homes there were destroyed or damaged, NBC 5's Mola Lenghi reported. A local nursing home was hit hard, with one person hospitalized. In Lancaster, NBC 5 reporter Ken Kalthoff said "there's tremendous damage here." At least a dozen homes were destroyed and 40 damaged, he said. More than 100 children and adults inside a daycare center there appeared safe but the building was heavily damaged. Images, video of the tornadoes from NBCDFW.com No deaths were reported but an undetermined number of people were injured, he added. Tornado sirens went off ahead of the touchdown. A helicopter over South Dallas, Texas, catches a funnel cloud tearing through neighborhoods. "People have stumbled out of their houses surprised they survived," reported Kalthoff, who saw the funnel cloud about a mile away. Lancaster High School and a large water tank barely avoided damage, he added. Live video from NBCDFW showed a Lancaster subdivision along Pepperidge Drive East in which dozens of houses had been damaged or destroyed. Emergency crews were staging in a parking lot at Cedar Valley College to the east of the subdivision. Orange tractor-trailers filmed being flung in the air were from the operations yard for Schneider National. The Wisconsin-based trucking company said the yard saw "massive" damage, the company said in a statement obtained by msnbc.com. Lancaster resident Devlin Norwood was at home when he heard the storm sirens. He then made a quick trip to a nearby store when he saw the funnel-shaped tornado lower and kick up debris, the Associated Press reported. "I didn't see any damage until I got back home. We had trees destroyed, fences down, boards down, boards penetrating the roof and the house, shingles damaged," said Norwood. Schools south of Dallas were locked down, NBC's Charles Hadlock reported, adding that one of the funnel clouds touched down in the town of Red Oak. At least 40,000 customers lost power in the storms, which also dumped hail the size of golf balls across the area. In Dallas County, the storm pushed cars into fences and toppled trees. A motor home was torn apart and crumpled in a driveway where a home's roof was torn off. Mobile homes and businesses were destroyed or damaged in Kennedale and one person was hospitalized, the fire department said. The massive Parks at Arlington mall along Interstate 20 shut down and management ordered shoppers and others into the basement, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. Employees at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington were moved into the tunnels, the newspaper said. At DFW Airport, American Airlines was having to inspect 68 planes for hail damage. Thirty-seven American flights were diverted and will stay in those cities overnight. American Eagle Airlines, the world’s largest regional airline, diverted 11 flights, and 33 of its planes will be inspected. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. More content from msnbc.com and NBC News: Follow US News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook | |
