This will chill the very marrow of your bones.

A young Canadian man murdered an elderly couple, then tried to escape across the US border. He was already on the run from the law, scheduled to appear in court that morning for sentencing. With him he carried a flak jacket, a homemade sword, some knives, and a bloodied chainsaw. He told the border officials he was in the US military.

The worst part? US OFFICIALS LET HIM THROUGH.

"Nobody asked us to detain him," said Bill Anthony, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

"Being bizarre is not a reason to keep somebody out of this country or lock them up. We're governed by laws and regulations, and he did not violate any regulations," Mr. Anthony told the Associated Press.

Neither had Mohammed Atta when he attempted to enter the US.

Eddie Young, a 38-year-old fish-plant worker, sat next to Mr. Despres in the customs office at Calais, Maine, while the agents processed them. Mr. Young was on his way to catch a flight to Mexico with friends, but was detained when the officers noticed on his file a 20-year-old drug conviction in Ottawa.

"When he come in, they opened his bag up and they took out," Mr. Young said in an interview. "It looked like large bayonets to me, but they could have been a little bit longer for swords, and then two pairs of brass knuckles fastened to his bag, a chainsaw and what looked like a flak jacket."

Mr. Young said the U.S. customs agents appeared to be joking around.

"I watched the customs guys fling the swords around in the back room," he said. "I mean, wouldn't the evidence be ruined with their fingerprints?"

Mr. Young said Mr. Despres was treated better than he was.

"When I come back in (to the room) they were giving him a coffee," he said. "He got processed faster than I did."

Let me remind everyone here that this guy already had a criminal record. He was due in court that morning to be sentenced for threatening to kill the elderly couple's son-in-law. It wasn't like he'd never committed a crime before.

It seems to me that in order to protect our country from unwanted intruders, we're going to have to start taking a little more initiative with detaining people. What is it going to take to get our borders secured?

h/t World Mag Blog.

Cross-posted at Suzanne's Blog

Posted by: Suzanne at 07:41 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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