Alton Alexander Nolen, 30, was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder and attempted murder in the beheading of a 54-year-old woman last week at his former workplace in Oklahoma and an attack on another woman, said Cleveland County District Attorney Greg Mashburn.
Nolen was also charged with a third felony, assault with a deadly weapon, the prosecutor said. The attempted murder charge is also called assault and battery with a deadly weapon, Mashburn said.
“It is highly likely I will seek the death penalty in this case,” Mashburn added.
Nolen, a recent convert to Islam, is accused of carrying out the attacks Thursday at a Vaughan Foods processing plant soon after he learned he’d lost his job there.
Nolen was trying “to get revenge on certain people he felt responsible” for his job loss, Mashburn said.
The knife used in the attack came from Nolen’s home, Mashburn said.
The FBI is also investigating the attack because Nolen “was saying Arabic terms in the attack,” Mashburn said.
Nolen’s Facebook page uses the name Jah’Keem Yisrael. The cover photo appears to be of fighters holding weapons. The postings include all-caps messages about Islam and quotations from the Quran.
Police said Nolen walked into the Vaughan Foods front office Thursday and attacked one of the first people he encountered, Colleen Hufford, 54. He severed her head with a knife and then attacked Traci Johnson, 43. Johnson is in stable condition at a nearby hospital for treatment of “numerous wounds,” according to police.
Mark Vaughan, the company CEO and a reserve deputy with the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office, confronted and twice shot Nolen, authorities said.
Nolen is now hospitalized, Mashburn said.
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