Reuben Ash was as shocked as everyone else when he heard the shot. Briefly, he wondered what was going on. Then he felt his legs “melt into the ground.”
Bystanders outside the Baltimore mosque screamed as Floyd Palmer walked up the wounded Ash, placed a pistol to his skull and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Palmer then cocked the weapon, placed it to Ash’s head again and got the same result. In frustration, he pounded the weapon against the pavement before making his escape.
Eleven years later, Ash walks with leg braces and lives with excruciating pain, but he thinks of himself as a lucky man. He lived. A man Palmer allegedly shot on Wednesday just outside of Atlanta did not.
In an interview Thursday with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Ash, now known as Reuben Muhammad, said he was shocked to hear Palmer was charged with an strikingly similar crime — killing a prayer leader at World Changers Church in College Park.
Police say Palmer, 51, stood up from a pew during a prayer service at the megachurch founded by Creflo Dollar and fired several rounds into Greg McDowell, 39, killing him. The accused gunman fled in a car and was arrested hours later in Buckhead.
Palmer, who is charged with murder, was booked with the attempted murder of Muhammad in the 2001 outside a mosque. That charge was reduced after psychiatrists found him to be delusional and paranoid and authorities had him committed to a mental facility.
“But even if he was insane, he should have been in the hospital a significant amount of time because he’s still dangerous,” Muhammad said. “It seemed like it could happen to anybody at any time.”
Fulton County police said they are still trying to figure out why Palmer, who apparently has lived in Georgia for about two years, shot another man at another house of worship. Palmer worked at the church as a maintenance man and left in August for “personal reasons,” according to church officials. His relationship with McDowell, who had two young children, is not known. McDowell’s family declined comment.
Fulton police spokeswoman Cpl. Kay Lester said police have not found the murder weapon, nor do they know how he allegedly got a gun given his record.
Palmer waived a first appearance hearing Friday morning before Fulton Magistrate Judge Maureen Malone. The mother of the victim, Brenda McDowell, was at the hearing but did not speak. His next hearing is scheduled Nov. 9.
Palmer spent a little more than a year in a mental facility in Maryland and was released over the objections of prosecutors, said Matthew Fraling, who prosecuted the case for the Baltimore city state’s attorney’s office.
“Given the depth of his delusion and paranoia, we thought he’d be committed for a long time,” Fraling said. “This is a guy who thought his wife was infecting him with AIDS through his meals. He also felt (Baltimore Ravens football star) Ray Lewis was following him.
“The doctors determined he no longer presented a threat to the community as long as he continued his medication,” Fraling continued. “We were concerned because of the nature of his crime and because there was no guarantee he’d do that.”
Fraling was watching TV on Wednesday afternoon when news of the Atlanta-area shooting came on.
“As soon as I heard the name, I said, ‘Oh, my God.’ It’s eerily similar. He worked maintenance at both places and, for whatever reason, was discharged of his duties from those places.”
Palmer’s family members say he was rocked by the death of his father just a few months before the 2001 shooting. Previously, he had worked for the Social Security Administration for two decades. His ex-wife divorced him in the 1990s after a tumultuous relationship that produced two daughters, said Palmer’s ex-wife’s mother. His ex-wife was later killed in the late 1990s by a man she was in a relationship with.
Fraling said Palmer believed his first victim was having an affair with his ex-wife, although there was no evidence of that. Before the shooting, the former prosecutor said, mosque leaders had been uneasy with Palmer and tried to minimize his duties and connection with the facility.
Before Muhammad became a member of the mosque and of the facility’s security team, Palmer had been active there and had talked to him about the faith and how to act as a security guard there.
“He’d joke around and was a nice guy but I saw him blow up and threaten a guy,” said Muhammad, 38.
Later, Muhammad read the psychological report in Palmer’s court file. “He told the psychiatrist that I was a hit man for Ray Lewis and Ray Lewis was trying to kill him,” Muhammad said, his voice rising incredulously.
According to the pretrial psychological evaluation, Palmer said the shooting occurred because one of his cousins, Richard Lollar, was killed in Atlanta shortly after the 2000 Super Bowl.
Lewis was charged in the stabbing death of Lollar and another man, but he was exonerated. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor obstruction of justice. Two other defendants were acquitted in the case.
Palmer said he shot Ashe because he believed Ash was being paid by Lewis to “get rid of him.”
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