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.
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According to a public records data base, one address he lived at was 817 21st Street South in Fargo.
Of the nine victims – seven men, a woman and a 15-year-old girl – three remained hospitalized, officials said.
St. Cloud police have stated that witnesses said the attacker referenced “Allah”, as well as asked a victim if they were Muslim.
At the centre, off-duty officer Jason Falconer – who works part time in nearby Avon, Minnesota – was squaring off against the suspect, authorities said.
That came after the Islamic State militant group, through the Amaq News Agency, called the suspect “a soldier of the Islamic State”, adding he “carried out the attack in response to calls to target the citizens of countries belonging to the crusader coalition”.
The suspect entered the mall around 8 p.m. Saturday and quickly began stabbing people, according to reports. It ended inside a Macy’s store where an off-duty police officer shot and killed the suspect.
Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton also condemned the attacks, saying: “If true that they were motivated by religious bigotry, I condemn them even more strongly”.
“The lone suspect was wearing a private security uniform and had at least one knife”, the police chief said.
Rick Thorton, an FBI Agent from Minneapolis, stated that the “FBI is now investigating this as a potential act of terrorism”. She later called and said she was safe in a secured area. The men screamed to get out of the mall because someone had a knife.
A spokesman for St. Cloud State University confirmed that Adan was a student there, but has not been enrolled since the spring semester.
An FBI official said that investigators are viewing the attack as a possible act of terrorism.
It was not immediately clear whether the attacker, whom the police have not identified, had any direct ties to the Islamic State, or whether he acted on his own. There’s a lot we don’t know.
Bellow said his brother, whose shift was about a half-hour from ending when the violence broke out, sent him a text that said there was a shooter in the mall.
The attacks shattered a sedate evening at Crossroads Centre, the largest mall in Minnesota outside Minneapolis and St Paul. “There were no notifications in the mall at all, it was just people running and screaming”.
In the ensuing minutes, police say, nine people were stabbed in the Saturday night attack at the Crossroads Center mall.
The mall remained on lockdown following the incident, but authorities expected those remaining inside to be released early Sunday.
“All of a sudden I heard pop, pop, pop”, Harley Exsted told the St. Cloud Times. “I thought someone tipped over a shelf”. All of a sudden these people started running.
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. “I just saw everybody running away”.
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Ashlee Fultz, formerly of Alexandria and now a St. Cloud resident, found out her mother and aunts were in Maurices in Crossroads Center when the attacks began.
