Police and witnesses said the attacker, wearing a private security company uniform, entered Crossroads Mall on Saturday night around 8 p.m. CT. ABC News reveals that, while making his way through Minnesota’s Crossroads Center Mall disguised as a security guard, he not only mentioned Allah but also asked one of the victims he stabbed if they were Muslim.
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The off-duty police officer who fatally shot the mass stabber in a Minnesota mall Saturday is a firearms training expert.
None of the victims suffered life-threatening injuries.
A news agency with ties to IS claimed the St. Cloud attack was carried out by a jihadist soldier, and President Barack Obama said Yesterday that the FBI was investigating the incident as a potential act of terrorism.
“The idea that people like ISIS will claim this responsibility for us is ridiculous”, he said.
Adan was employed by security firm Securitas and was assigned for a few months to an Electrolux factory near the mall, Electrolux spokeswoman Eloise Hale said.
St. Cloud, a city of 67,000 about 65 miles northwest of Minneapolis, is home to one of Minnesota’s larger immigrant Muslim communities, and the incident has rattled people there.
The group’s news agency said on Sunday that the man, who was shot dead by an off-duty police officer, was a “soldier of the Islamic State”.
Meanwhile, leaders of organizations that focus on Islamic relations, including the Minnesota chapter of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) and the Rochester-based organization CIDI (Community Interfaith Dialogue on Islam) have concerns about potential backlash against Somali-Americans.
Documents obtained by Valley News Live show 22-year-old Adan’s social security number was issued by North Dakota sometime between 1995 and 1998, meaning he was anywhere from 1-to-7 years old when he arrived in the U.S. This means too that he was radicalized here in the states.
“It would kind of make me feel a little more safe if they had a metal detector at the door”, said Gove. More than 20 young men have left the state since 2007 to join al-Shabab in Somalia; the US considers the eastern Africa militant group a terrorist group. At least 20 of them have left the country to join Islamic extremist group al-Shabab, which is centralized in Somalia; others have traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State. In addition, nine Minnesota men face sentencing on terror charges for plotting to join the Islamic State. Securitas has not been contacted by law enforcement in this matter but will cooperate fully if contacted.
Gov. Mark Dayton said he was “appalled at the awful attacks on innocent Minnesotans in St. Cloud last night”. Investigators have found no evidence that he had direct or indirect communications with the Islamic State, or that the militant group planned the attack or knew of it beforehand. CNN was also unable to confirm if he was Somali.
He said there was no known connection between that attack and bombings in New York City and New Jersey over the weekend. Some teens have reported being called “ISIS” or “terrorist”, he said. According to Anderson, most of the encounters were for minor traffic violations, none of which led to an arrest. He was said to be an honor student in high school.
“There is a lot we don’t know”, said Rick Thornton, FBI special agent. The victims included seven men, one woman and a 15-year-old girl. All 10 have been released from the hospital, St. Cloud authorities said.
While Falconer, the part-time officer with the Avon Police Department and former police chief in another town, isn’t ready to talk publicly just yet, he did talk with 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS reporter Beth McDonough at his other job, Tactical Advantage in Waite Park. “Three times this took place before the officer had the blow that took him out”.
The mall remained closed Sunday.
Weires and her friends were able to leave the mall before authorities enforced a lockdown. He had been acting strangely before the attack, they said.
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“He was screaming at us, ‘Get the F out!’ ” she said about one of the men, according to the paper. “There was a bunch of people running into the JCPenney mall entrance, and they were just screaming that someone was going around the mall stabbing people, and that there was blood everywhere”. “Someone has a knife, ‘” Weires said. One student had said Somali-Americans were called IS members and had their headscarves pulled off. In a brief interview with the Star Tribune, Falconer said he had “been trying to stay away from it all, for the time being”.
