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Oklahoma Police Ask FBI To Investigate Beheading Incident

A day after a woman was beheaded at her workplace in Moore, Okla., police there are asking the FBI to investigate.

Brian Hardzinski, with NPR member station KGOU, tells our newscast unit that police want the FBI to probe any possible connections to terrorism. He filed this report for our Newscast unit:

"Police say Alton Nolen walked into a food distribution warehouse around 4 p.m. Thursday and attacked two co-workers with a knife.

"Moore Police Sgt. Jeremy Lewis told reporters Friday morning Colleen Hufford was beheaded.

" 'After conducting interviews with co-workers of Nolen, information was obtained that he recently started trying to convert co-workers to the Muslim religion,' Lewis said.

"Another co-worker who's also an off-duty Oklahoma County Sheriff's deputy shot Nolen, stopping the attack. Nolen and the other woman he reportedly attacked survived and were transported to a nearby hospital. Nolen had recently been fired from the warehouse and has a lengthy criminal record."

Of course, this incident comes after the self-proclaimed Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL, released videos showing the decapitation of several Westerners. MSNBC reports, however, that police say they do not have any indications that this was related to international terrorism.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.
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