In a phone interview on Sunday morning, Mayor Dave Kleis said the mall, Crossroads Center, was an active crime scene and would remain closed.
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The second man had blood on the back of his shirt, she said. The men screamed to get out of the mall because someone had a knife.
Weires and her friends were able to leave the mall before authorities enforced a lockdown. More from authorities is expected later Sunday. They say the suspect was dressed in a private security uniform and reportedly made references to Allah. The previous story is below.
Police in St. Cloud confirmed that the assailant – who has not been formally identified – had asked some victims whether they were Muslim before stabbing them and made “some references to Allah” before launching his attacks.
In a media briefing after midnight Sunday, Police Chief William Blair Anderson said the off-duty officer from another jurisdiction confronted and killed the suspect inside Crossroads Center.
The stabbings occurred in multiple locations inside the mall, including the common area and in several stores.
The knife attack, which happened about 100km northwest of Minneapolis, came at a time of heightened concern in the USA about violence in public places.
Three victims remained hospitalized as of Sunday but none had life-threatening injuries, Kleis said.
FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Rick Thornton said the attack was being investigated as a possible act of terrorism, but that agents were still digging into the attacker’s background and possible motives. “We’ve got eight victims who were assaulted here in our mall. things wont be the same here”, Anderson said.
A man who stabbed nine people at a mall in central Minnesota before being shot dead is a “soldier of the Islamic State”, the militant group’s news agency said on Sunday, as the FBI investigated the attack as a potential act of terrorism.
The Associated Press reports that the Islamic State often claims credit in the immediate wake of terrorist attacks even if they had little or nothing to do with the organization of it – other than to have possibly “inspired” the attacker. IS has encouraged so-called “lone wolf” attacks.
Police declined to release the name of the suspect, but community members have identified him as Dahir Adan, a junior at St. Cloud State University who worked as a security guard part time. He said authorities have no reason to believe anyone else was involved in the attack, and that the FBI had offered to help with the investigation.
Chief Anderson said the attack had changed the city forever. A second suspicious device was found a few blocks away, authorities say.
A pipe bomb also exploded in a New Jersey beach town on Saturday along the route of a charity race to benefit military veterans but no injuries were reported in what investigators also were treating as a possible act of terrorism. There was no indication that any of the incidents were linked. Photos and video of the mall taken hours after the incident showed groups of shoppers waiting to be released, including some huddled together near a food court entrance.
The attack happened in St Cloud, 70 miles (110km) out of Minneapolis.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims in this attack.
“All of a sudden these people started running – I just saw everybody running our way”.
Bayne said she ran out to the parking lot and took off in her auto.
Adonis Samuels, 42, St. Cloud, was also outside the mall where his wife Roxanne is a manager at Clinique at Macy’s.
She said: “We saw these two guys – one was bleeding from the side of his face”.
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Samuels remained outside, watching for her.
