Thornton added that the Federal Bureau of Investigation will look at the suspect’s social media accounts, his electronic devices and talk to people associated with him.
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The Islamic State-linked Amaq news agency said the mall attacker “carried out the operation in response to calls to target citizens of countries belonging to the crusader coalition”. Before that, dozens of male Minnesota residents had left to join Al-Shabaab, a terrorist group working to turn Somalia into an Islamist state.
The terrorist group, also known as ISIS, on Sunday night called the attacker a “soldier of the Islamic State” a day after he launched the attack inside the Crossroads Center mall in St. Cloud. It has also claimed past attacks that are not believed to have been planned by its central leadership.
The man was employed by the security firm Securitas and had worked a temporary assignment that ended in June as a guard at the Electrolux Home Products store in the mall, Eletrolux spokeswoman Eloise Hale said.
Ahmed says Dahir was born in Somalia and lived in the US the last 15 years.
“The news of the St. Cloud mall was shocking to the friends, relatives and community of the deceased…” Spokesman Adam Hammer said Adan’s intended major was information systems, which is a computer-related field.
Adan said police raided the apartment where he lived with his son and several others on Sunday, seizing photos and other materials from the premises.
“I couldn’t be more proud of him, he was in the right spot at the right time under the right circumstances to stop a very serious threat to the public”, Avon Police Chief Corey Nellis said.
A young Somali man dressed as a private security guard entered the Crossroads Center mall over the weekend wielding what appeared to be a kitchen knife.
But Falconer has consistently been identified in the mainstream mediaonly as as a “former police chief” and “off-duty police officer”. Anderson said Falconer fired as the attacker was lunging at him with the knife, and continued to engage him as the attacker got up three times.
Ashley Bayne, an employee of JCPenney at the mall, was visiting a coworker at the time of the incident.
St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis identified that officer as Jason Falconer during a press conference Sunday.
Anderson earlier said the man reportedly made at least one reference to Allah and asked a victim if he was Muslim before attacking him.
Somali community leaders in St. Cloud, about 60 miles northwest of Minneapolis-St. Paragraph after paragraph of quotes appear in the article about religion of peace, worries about backlash, members of the Somali community anxious that their families may have been victimized, before it actually gets to the attacks.
“There were so many cop cars just responding to the area”, Bayne said. The immigrant community has been a target for terrorism recruiters in recent years.
Dozens of people from the Minneapolis – St. Paul area, many of them young Somali-American men, have travelled or attempted to travel overseas to support ISIS or al Shabaab, a Somalia-based militant group, since 2007, according to USA prosecutors. Since 2014, nine Somali-Americans from that state were either convicted at trial or pleaded guilty in a plot to join ISIS by traveling to Syria.
The possibility of an attack on USA soil has been a major concern for law enforcement. A second suspicious device was found a few blocks away, authorities say. Hours before that, a pipe bomb exploded in Seaside Park, New Jersey, shortly before thousands of runners were due to participate in a charity 5K race. But both New York governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio said there was no indication it was linked to global terrorism.
The mall-Crossroads Center-has a “Code of Conduct” that forbids “firearms or illegal weapons”. The victims included seven men, one woman and a 15-year-old girl.
Photos and video taken hours after the incident showed groups of shoppers waiting to be released from the mall.
Harley and Tama Exsted of Isle were in St. Cloud to watch their son play in a college golf tournament and were in the mall when the attack happened. “I thought someone tipped over a shelf. There were no notifications in the mall at all, it was just people running and screaming”. “I just saw everybody running our way”.
“I went closer to the mall entrance by J.C. Penney’s and I was looking at some jeans and all the sudden people were just running in chaos”, Bayne said. He was born in Kenya, but was of Somali origin, and came to the USA 15 years ago.
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“The only thing that they said that we heard clearly”, she said, “was get the f*** out of the mall”.
