Jacob D. Robida

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Jacob Robida

Jacob D. Robida (June 13, 1987 – February 5, 2006) was a Massachusetts teenager who attacked patrons at a Massachusetts gay bar, murdered a police officer, shot a female companion, and ultimately shot himself after fleeing to Norfork, Arkansas.

Days before the deadly shootings, Robida attacked several patrons in a New Bedford gay bar, then fled the state. He died in a hospital in Springfield, Missouri at 03:38 CST on February 5, 2006, following a shootout with local authorities on February 4, 2006, in Norfork, Arkansas, in which he attempted to commit suicide, shooting himself in the head.

1 Accusations and manhunt
2 Capture
3 MySpace biography
4 In response
5 See also
6 External links and references

[edit] Accusations and manhunt

The Puzzles Lounge

In the early hours of Thursday, February 2, 2006, eighteen year-old Jacob Robida entered a gay bar in New Bedford, Massachusetts, fifty miles (93 km) south of Boston. The teenager, dressed in black, entered the Puzzles Lounge, a popular local bar, around midnight. Robida proceeded to order a drink using a fake ID which indicated his age was twenty-three. After downing his first drink, he asked the bartender if the lounge was a gay bar. The bartender confirmed that it was. After finishing his second drink, Robida swung a hatchet at a patron's head, injuring him. Other patrons tackled him and relieved him of the hatchet, whereupon Robida produced a handgun and began shooting, wounding at least three more people.

Robida then fled the scene; both the hatchet and a machete were later recovered by authorities in the bar. Robida was then wanted on three counts of attempted murder. Police treated the incident as a hate crime. In total, four people were seriously hurt in the attack. Local authorities immediately began a manhunt for Robida and raided his mother's home in New Bedford. They talked to his mother, who told them that she had last seen Robida at 1:00 a.m. bleeding from the head and that he had left soon after. They found weapons of all types, including hatchets, knives, a few handguns, as well as a shotgun. When police entered Robida's bedroom, they found "Nazi regalia" and anti-Semitic writings all over his bedroom walls. [1] Fearing that he may have left Massachusetts, the local authorities contacted the FBI, which sparked a nationwide manhunt. Flyers were distributed all over Massachusetts, which gave a depiction of Robida, and stated that he was driving a 1999 green Pontiac.

[edit] Capture

In the afternoon of February 4, 2006, Robida's green Pontiac was seen about 1500 miles away in Arkansas, and Jim Sell, a Gassville police officer, initiated a traffic stop. After conversing with the officer for about half a minute, Robida opened fire with a 9mm handgun, killing the officer. Police pursued him and laid spike traps, but this failed to stop the vehicle. Robida fled about eighteen miles and stopped in Norfork, Arkansas and exchanged gunfire with police. During the gunfight, he shot his female companion, Jennifer Rena Bailey, age 33, of Charleston, West Virginia at point blank range, killing her. The authorities believe that Robida had picked her up earlier in the week at her home in West Virginia, for some unknown reason. It has been reported that Robida lived with her in West Virginia in 2004. After Bailey's death, Robida apparently attempted to commit suicide, shooting himself in the head. He was airlifted over a hundred miles to Springfield, Missouri for medical treatment, where he died of his injuries not long afterward.

[edit] MySpace biography

A high school dropout, [2] Robida maintained a personal website on MySpace.com (now taken down - however, there is a copy of the page's contents here), which showed his main interests to be Neo-Nazism and the rap group Insane Clown Posse. He used the family name Juggalo for an excuse so that all people would think that the juggalos are a gang and not a family, a term coined by Insane Clown Posse to mean "a follower of the Dark Carnival," and made many references to the Juggalo sub-culture on the site.

[edit] In response

On February 7, 2006, Insane Clown Posse posted a response to the events in which Robida was involved. The response reviled Robida's actions and expressed ICP's regret over them.

ICP's manager, Alex Abbiss, wrote the response. He was quoted saying:

"Today I'd like to speak out about the incident which took place in New Bedford, Mass. First, I'd like to say that we'd like to extend our condolences to the victims and their families in this tragedy. Our prayers are with you. And with that said, I would now like to address the whole issue. This guy had problems. Anyone going into a bar swinging an axe and shooting a gun would have to realize that they would get caught and/or get killed, and that this would be the last action they took for the rest of their lives, and would clearly have to be insane and out of their mind to do this...in my opinion, the perpetrator of this crime committed these acts not because he was a Juggalo, but because he was a neo-Nazi. He subscribed to an ideology of racism and bigotry, and was quite clearly, in my opinion, out of his mind. Anyone that knows anything at all about Juggalos knows that in no way, shape, or form would we ever approve of this type of bullshit behavior." [3]