By: Daiyu Tang
After our initial report on the fatal shooting outside the Theatre / Gein, a confrontation that ended when HPD Inspector Krystal O’Neil fired on a man who had taken hostages an anonymous message landed in the Observer’s inbox.
Signed “⸸ Crowfather’s Daughter ⸸,” the sender claims to have reviewed incident reports, witness statements, and items recovered after Isaac Injinerski’s hospitalisation. The picture that emerges is darker than a single chaotic afternoon: a long, obsessive fixation on Inspector O’Neil that escalated from unwanted attention to outright violence.
According to the dossier, Injinerski did not wake up one day and choose a public showdown. Months earlier, specifically on May 25th at the Daily Grind, he allegedly approached O’Neil, a stranger to him then, and led her outside so “no one else would see.” There, the source says, he proposed marriage. Not as a joke, not as a dare: as a plan. The same materials allege he had been clipping and annotating newspaper coverage of O’Neil from the Observer and other sources and was even carrying a snapshot of a cardboard cut-out of her, and talking about taking her to Montana “to live happily ever after.” Those familiar with the HPD will know that a cardboard cut-out does exist and has been wheeled out before, so it’s likely Injinerski saw it there.
When O’Neil declined, the account continues, the man pressed a knife to his own throat. A nearby patrol officer drew a service weapon; both the officer and O’Neil tried to talk him down. Instead, the source says, Injinerski lunged and drove the blade into O’Neil near the heart. Gunfire followed. Both went to hospital. He survived long enough to be moved into custody.
The same source alleges that after release from the hospital to lockup, Injinerski’s focus on O’Neil did not fade. He was reportedly seen shadowing her path near a bar by the firehouse. Whether that encounter was coordination or fixation is something we cannot say; we can say it fits the broader pattern described: not love, but compulsion, the kind of fantasy that turns a person into a target when reality fails to conform.
These claims, if borne out, reframe the shooting outside the Gein not as a single flash of madness but as the violent terminus of a months-long delusion. They also raise questions about what warning signs were visible to colleagues, what interventions, protective or clinical, were attempted, and whether anyone beyond O’Neil herself understood the threat curve she was walking. Did she? From my view as editor of the Obsever, Krystal has lucked out more than once and bounced back too quickly to be healthy. Almost hanged? Back on duty a little later.
The Observer has formally requested: HPD incident reports and CAD logs referencing Injinerski and O’Neil on or about May 25 at the Daily Grind; any property receipts reflecting a scrapbook or personal effects recovered upon his detention or hospitalization; the use-of-force documentation from the Gein shooting; and any subsequent reports tying him to surveillance of O’Neil near the FDH. As of publication, those records have not been produced. We have also asked HPD whether body-worn camera footage exists from the May 25th encounter.
We publish these allegations not as gospel but as a call for clarity. If a ‘decorated’ (Heh -Ed) commander was, for months, the object of a threat that metastasized into an attack, the public deserves to know what was seen, what was missed, and what will change to keep would-be ‘grand gestures’ from becoming funerals. Then again, in this town perhaps no one would mind and that, is a sad state of affairs no matter the individual.
Editor’s Note
Hathian breeds myths about its monsters. We romanticize the obsessive as ‘passionate,‘ the stalker as ‘misunderstood,‘ the man with a scrapbook as a ‘suitor with follow-through.’ I’ve had enough of that nonsense to last several lifetimes. If you press a knife to your own throat to make a woman listen, you are not a lover; you are a loaded gun with a heartbeat. If, when she refuses you, you answer with steel, you’ve written your own obituary and she has every right in the moment if that’s what is needed.
Our original piece covered what could be seen in the street: a barricade of cruisers, a gunshot, an officer walking away alive because she did not miss. What this letter adds, if verified, is the prelude that too often gets erased in the smoke. We cannot read minds, but we can read patterns, and the pattern described here is textbook Hathian: a fantasy of possession curdling into violence.
As for the username of this dossier to us? No traces so far, but we’re on the case. As always you can contact us with your tips and stories!
