Prosecutor: Oklahoma beheading attack was more about race than religion

Though radical Islam might have influenced accused killer Alton Nolen, religion was not his primary motive for beheading a coworker, the prosecutor in the case said today.

Nolen, 30, had just been fired on Thursday from his job at Vaughan Foods, a processing plant in Moore, Okla., when he allegedly attacked Colleen Hufford, 54, severing her head with a knife. Authorities say he then repeatedly stabbed Traci Johnson, 43. He stopped when company executive Mark Vaughan, a reserve sheriff's deputy, shot him, police said. Nolen and Johnson survived their injuries.

Cleveland County prosecutor Greg Mashburn said Johnson had complained to human resources that she had an altercation with Nolen “about him not liking white people.” Vaughan Foods employees also reported Nolen tried to convert several of his coworkers to Islam, but Mashburn said that wasn’t what the attack was about.

“It had more to do with race rather than trying to convert people,” Mashburn said. Today, authorities charged Nolen with first-degree murder and assault. Mashburn said he is considering seeking the death penalty against Nolen.

The police in Moore on Friday called in the FBI to look into possible connections between Nolen’s crime and the high-profile beheadings of Westerners by militants with ISIS in the Middle East. Nolen had shown support for radical Islam on his Facebook page. He posted photos of Osama bin Laden, predicted the Statue of Liberty would go up in flames, and exclaimed, “AMERICA AND ISRAEL ARE WICKED. WAKE UP MUSLIMS!!!” He also had posted a picture of a beheading.

“There was some sort of infatuation with beheadings,” Mashburn said. “It seemed to be related to his interest in killing someone that way.”

Nolen’s family said they knew little about his beliefs or his recent conversion to Islam.

“My son was raised up in a loving home. My son was raised up believing in God,” said his mother, Joyce Nolen, in a video posted to Facebook. Nolen reportedly went to a nondenominational Christian church growing up in southeast Oklahoma.

In 2011, Nolen went to prison for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute and assaulting a police officer. He was released in 2013. Nolen’s cousin James Fulsom said he did not believe Nolen converted in prison.

“I spoke to him once he was released, and when we spoke, there was nothing of the sort,” Fulsom told the Associated Press. CNN reported Nolen’s religious posts began in April 2013, shortly after he was released from prison.

Members of the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City remember seeing Nolen at prayers, but told local news affiliate KOCO he rarely spoke to any of them.

“What he did was on his own choice,” said Saad Mohammed, a spokesperson for the mosque. “This was an individual who made a decision, and that decision was his own, and as Muslims we are against it. We condemn it wholeheartedly.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.