Schliep, 24, told WCCO-TV that the attacker stabbed him in the head and Schliep fell to the ground.
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Adan, who worked part time as a private security guard for an Electrolux factory, put on a uniform and went into the Crossroads Center shopping mall in St. Cloud, Minn., armed with what is said to have been a kitchen knife.
Anderson earlier said the man reportedly made at least one reference to Allah and asked a victim if he was Muslim before attacking him.
“We are now investigating this as a potential act of terrorism”, said the FBI’s Richard Thornton, speaking at a news conference at police headquarters early Sunday afternoon. The police chief declined to provide further details about the attacker until more information was known. An ISIS-related news agency called Adan a “soldier of the Islamic state”, although there has been no clear indication of contact between the Somali student and the terrorist group.
“No, we don’t know anything about ISIS”. However, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will also continue to investigate.
The suspect’s father, Ahmed Adan, first identified his son as the attacker in an interview with the Star-Tribune newspaper.
The attack in St. Cloud, a city of about 65,000 people, began shortly after an explosion in a crowded New York City neighborhood injured 29 people; a suspicious device was found a few blocks away and safely removed. Police say he was not a mall employee.
Terrorism experts say they’re eager to precisely because they apparently haven’t carried out carefully planned attacks here and because in terrorism circles, your influence is often ranked by numbers of attacks.
Isaiah Mordal says he was leaving work at a pretzel shop at Crossroads Center mall Saturday with his girlfriend Johanna Bohnenkamp when he saw Dahir Adan stab two others.
Police executed search warrants for two apartments, including the one where Adan lived with his father, Anderson said. “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”.
Dahir Adan, 22, is seen in a Facebook photo.
“We haven’t uncovered anything that would suggest [he was not a] lone attacker at this point”, St. Cloud’s police chief, William Blair Anderson, said Sunday at a news conference.
The assailant was killed by an off-duty Avon police officer, identified as Jason Falconer, whom officials praised at a press conference today. Falconer is a firearms instructor who emphasizes the most realistic training methods possible, and he wants all of his clients who train with him to be prepared for an occurrence exactly like the one he faced that day: ready to stand up to an attacker at any moment, or secure the safety of their family at home or in public. After all, according to his firing range’s website, Falconer specializes in “reality-based firearms, law enforcement and personal security training”.
Corey Nellis, Avon’s police chief, said at a news conference Monday that it was “divine intervention” that brought Falconer to the mall at that moment.
“We are also concerned about the potential backlash to this community”.
We express our deepest sympathy and condolences to all those injured and other who were impacted as a result of the incident at the Crossroads Mall.
Ahmed says Dahir was born in Somalia and lived in the USA the last 15 years. “We, as a community, will continue to build bridges for understanding”, LSSND said in a statement. “. We strongly stress that everybody calms down and focus on what unites us than what divides us in these hard times”.
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Rumors swirled on Monday among the city’s close-knit Somali community, with some worrying over escalating tensions directed at Muslims or wondering what led to the attack.
