RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Khallid Abdul Muhammad usually shocks people from the pulpit, but this time the major surprise came after his speech.
Of the many mysteries surrounding the shooting attack Sunday night against the suspended Nation of Islam minister, none drew more attention than his decision to abandon his intensive security plan.
Muhammad was gunned down outside an auditorium at the University of California campus after he surprised authorities by exiting through an unguarded door, where he mingled with 50 or 60 people.
Police said Monday they were investigating the possibility that a phony note had been passed to Muhammad on stage, informing him that he had to move the program outside because his time had expired.
Waiting in the crowd outside was James Edward Bess, of Tacoma, Wash., who police say began firing from a distance of 10 feet with a 9mm pistol, striking Muhammad in the leg and injuring five bodyguards.
The note raised the possibility of a conspiracy. Police wouldn't discount that but said they're operating on the theory Bess acted alone.
Riverside Police Chief Ken Fortier said two other loaded, 9mm guns were found in a backpack nearby. In an automobile with Washington plates, police also found a .30-caliber rifle and a telescopic sight.
"Right now, we're intent on tracing (Bess') movements and whether he was stalking Muhammad," Fortier said.
University spokesman Jack Chappell said authorities were caught off-guard because Muhammad "was supposed to remain in the gymnasium. . . . There was no compelling reason to leave."
The speech was vintage hard-line Muhammad, and he drew the usual cheers by characterizing whites as satanic and Jews as oppressors.
Another Muhammad standard: protesters on hand. One of them, Irv Rubin of the Jewish Defense League, was ordered out of the auditorium after shouting at Muhammad.
But police discounted any relationship between the protests and the shooting.
Both Muhammad and Bess had suffered punishment by the Nation of Islam leadership. Muhammad was suspended last year for racist and violent remarks. Bess was dismissed three years ago.
Police were investigating whether Muhammad had been involved in Bess' dismissal.
After the shooting, a crowd wrestled Bess to the ground, beating him until police waded in with batons. There was a second, small uprising later, when several Muhammad supporters complained an ambulance took too long arriving.
The attack was similar, though less tragic, to the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X, the one-time Nation of Islam leader shot while speaking to 300 followers in Harlem.
At the university Monday, Chappell expressed the school's regrets, to "what occurred as well as the demagoguery that preceded it."
Black students were meeting to discuss the attack and refused comment in deference to Muhammad's long-standing fight with the media, which he refers to as the "Jews media."
Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the shooting. What such acts do, he said, is "confer on a person like Muhammad the status of a martyr, and that would be very unfortunate, because basically his message is one of hate."
