Encounters with accused killer Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani led several local Muslims to take steps to avoid him when they saw him on campus or elsewhere in the community.

Al-Zahrani, the man accused of fatally stabbing Binghamton University Professor Richard Antoun on campus Friday, had accused fellow Middle Eastern students of following him, [had] answer[ed] a greeting of peace with an obscene insult, and [had] disparaged a local mosque, according to three students interviewed Saturday night.

“Tell these students not to follow me,” Awni Qasaimeh, a Jordanian studying for his doctorate in industrial and systems engineering, said Al-Zahrani told him last week. “Do not make me trouble.”…

From Fox News:

People who lived and studied with the graduate student accused of fatally stabbing a Binghamton University anthropology professor say the younger man was confrontational and threatening.

Souleyman Sukho says that Abdulsalam al-Zahrani came at him with a knife during the three weeks they shared an apartment with another student, Luis Pena.

Pena says he recalls the 46-year-old sitting on the sofa and suddenly blurting out, “I just feel like destroying the world.”…

Last December, a SUNY Binghamton professor was stabbed to death by a paranoid graduate student. The student was well known to police and fellow students for his threatening and crazy behavior, but was still a student at Binghamton.

Yesterday, a graduate student at the University of Florida famous for his big-lecture geography class about which one student, echoing other comments, writes “Impossible NOT to get an A,” was shot by police. It’s not clear what condition he’s in.

For a year, at least one professor and one counselor at the university had known that the student was seriously unstable:

Police first met with Adu-Brempong on Monday to check on him after a report of possible emotional problems.

Geography professor Peter Waylen had contacted police to say Adu-Brempong had sent an e-mail with troubling statements, which were redacted in the police report. Waylen told police Adu-Brempong had been having delusional thoughts for at least a year and that he previously had received help from a UF counselor because he believed the U.S. government was not going to renew his student visa, the report stated.

… Waylen and an officer spoke Monday with Adu-Brempong at his apartment.

“I asked Adu-Brempong if he had any concerns that I could help with. Adu-Brempong advised that he was fine and did not need anyone’s help,” Officer Gene Rogers wrote in the report. “I advised him that Waylen and I were concerned for his safety and were there to assist him any way we could.”

The report states Adu-Brempong refused help from a counselor and stated several times that he was fine.

Last night a neighbor called police because Adu-Brempong was screaming inside of his apartment. Details on what caused him to be shot are unclear at this point. Police say he threatened them with a knife and a pipe.

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UD thanks a reader for sending her the Florida story.

A graduate student has stabbed Richard Antoun, an anthropology professor, “four times with a 6-inch kitchen blade inside a campus office.”

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UPDATE:

From WHRW News:

Unconfirmed reports are coming in stating that the suspect was a foreign exchange graduate student, possibly from Egypt with difficultly obtaining grad funding, whose dissertation was to be judged by the professor.

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Another Update: Background on this sort of crime here in a 2007 New York Times article.

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Richard Antoun, distinguished anthropologist, has died.

Professors and students told pressconnects.com reporter George Basler that the mood in the building was one of shock and fear. “It’s scary as hell,” said Peter Knuepfer, an associate professor of geological sciences who works in Science I. “It’s another one of those things like the downtown shooting (at the American Civic Association, where 13 people were fatally shot in April). You think it happens somewhere else, but it happens here too.”

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An article, in a SUNY magazine, about Antoun.

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A statement from SUNY Binghamton’s president.