Trolley Square killer Sulejman Talovic was a loner. The 18-year-old was comfortable within his own family but otherwise was withdrawn, almost invisible even among his fellow Muslims in the mosque.
That is the clearer picture that is emerging after numerous interviews in Bosnia and in this country. The picture also shows Talovic reacting violently in a childhood confrontation and witnessing violence against his mother while in Salt Lake City.
On Feb. 12, Talovic — armed with a shotgun, a pistol and a backpack filled with ammunition — murdered five visitors to Trolley Square and injured four others before he was killed by police officers.
The extent of his isolation is shown by the fact that his girlfriend was a young woman whom he never met in person. She was Monika, a 17-year-old Bosnian refugee in Amarillo, Texas, with whom he talked frequently on the telephone during the month before his homicidal rampage.
Monika said he had only two or three friends and also knew a man in the mosque he attended in Salt Lake City.
"I don't know if he was his friend, but he liked to talk to him," Monika said. "They only saw each other" during services at the mosque. "They only saw each other like three or four times."
Tarek Nosseir, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake, said Thursday that when he read in the Deseret Morning News about Talovic talking with a man at the mosque, he was surprised.
He remembered Talovic from seeing his picture after the shootings, he said. Nosseir recognized him but said he saw him only in the mosque once.
From all he had heard, Talovic seems to have been an isolated person, he added.
"I can't recall him," said Maung Maung, who emphasized he was speaking for himself and not in his role as treasurer of the Islamic Society.
However, he added, that could be because "we don't pay too much attention to who's coming and going" at the mosque. Friday is prayer day, and since that is a workday in Utah, "people come in there and pray and leave" quickly. "There's not much cross-socialization."
The mosque serves a growing congregation of refugees from several Asian and African countries.
Maung discounted the idea that a radical could have recruited Talovic at the mosque to carry out an act of terrorism. He has heard of nothing like infiltration or trouble of that kind.
"I'd call the FBI right away" or he would be arrested, he said. "We don't want to get even near any of those things or tolerate those kinds of things."
After all, he said, people suspect "FBI agents are out there" keeping an eye on activities of Muslims. "It doesn't have to be a white guy, a tall guy. It could be one of our immigrants, an informant."
There's no need to fear recruitment for terror within mosques here, he said. In fact, Utah Muslims are worried about unsubstantiated accusations. That could "ruin our life here. ... We are very worried and scared."
In Sarajevo, Bosnia's capital, some newspapers speculated that Sulejman Talovic was connected to extremist circles in a Salt Lake mosque.
"But Suljo (his father) says that that's not possible because he never spent a lot of time in the mosque," said journalist Nedim Hasic of the magazine Slobodna Bosna. "They were together, only on Fridays, and went back to the house."
Talovic's isolation seemed obvious to his uncle, Sacir Cumurovic, who lives in Jacksonville, Fla.
In Bosnia for Sulejman's funeral, he said he doubted the fighting in that country, 1992-95, had an impact on Sulejman Talovic. "No, he's little kid" at that time, he said.
He said he saw Talovic only about twice in the United States. That was when he visited his sister in Salt Lake City.
"Sulejman just said 'Hi' and he went away," he said.
His sister told Cumurovic that the boy was a "really good kid, and that he's a loner."
Cumurovic recalled him as a nice young man who talked in a natural way and seemed shy.
In 2006, the last time he visited his sister, "she told him about that, that he doesn't go out, he doesn't have a girlfriend.
"And when Sulejman came out from the room, he asked him, 'Why don't you have a girlfriend? You want me to find you one?' He was joking with him."
But Talovic took his uncle up on the offer. "He said, 'Yeah, yeah, I would love to.'"
Eventually, Cumurovic provided the phone number of Monika, the niece of his friend. Talovic then began an intense telephone relationship with the girl.
Recently, published reports quoted relatives as saying Talovic bragged about joining a gang. However, to some, joining a group seemed out of character for Talovic.
Authorities who were willing to comment had little faith in braggadocio about his becoming a gangster.
Salt Lake County Sheriff's Lt. Teri Sommers, head of the Metro Gang Unit, said her office has no record of Talovic having a gang affiliation.
"We ran him the next day (after the shootings), and nothing was found," she said. "We never had him documented as a gang member."
The Metro Gang Unit and the Salt Lake City Gang Unit work closely together but still have separate databases. Thursday, Salt Lake City police did not want to make any comments on the investigation or whether they believed Talovic did or did not have gang ties.
However, the young man was exposed to violence in Salt Lake City, Suljo Talovic said. And the youth reacted violently, too.
While attending his son's funeral in Talovici, Bosnia, Suljo Talovic said that when Sulejman was 12, the boy saw three drug addicts attack his mother.
The father, through a translator, said the assault occurred five or six years ago.
Some small children in the Talovic family's former neighborhood were neglected, he said. "The kids went inside (the Talovic home) without permission or anything," he said.
His wife, Sabira Talovic, caught one child urinating in a corner of her home.
Speaking of friction at the time, he said someone threw a rock at Sulejman Talovic "and he picked up the rock and threw it back."
Sabira Talovic went to speak to a parent of the children, he added. "She asked them not to do that because she can't clean after their child."
The parent "slugged her," he added.
"After that, because of that incident ... there were some drug addicts" who attacked Sabira Talovic in front of the boy. But Suljo Talovic said it wasn't serious, that he "called the police and they solved the problem."
Why did Sulejman Talovic leave school?
"He said that someone attacked him when he was a kid in the school, and he was really upset about that. ... He was quiet and sad for days and days.
"And he tried to talk to him, but he didn't want to explain what happened. And after a few weeks, the son told him that he had problems in school and everything, and Suljo says he didn't think about a better way of solving that problem.
"He decided to move him away from the school," the translator said.
Contributing: Pat Reavy
E-mail: bau@desnews.com