He said it doesn’t appear that anyone else was involved in the attack at the Crossroads Center in St. Cloud, which began at around 8 p.m. and was over within minutes.
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Falconer “was there at the right time and the right place”, St Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis said.
No one answered the door late Sunday at a home address listed for Falconer, and a voicemail box for a telephone listing was full and not accepting new messages.
The mall will reopen Monday.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said she strongly condemned “the apparent terrorist attacks in Minnesota, New Jersey, and New York” and said Islamic State’s claim of responsibility for the St. Cloud attack should “steel our resolve to protect our country and defeat ISIS and other terrorist groups”. They later moved up to the registers, he said. Adan was shot dead by an off-duty police officer. The nine victims included a 15-year-old girl, a 50-year-old woman and seven men ranging in age from 20 to 53.
Anthony Bellow, 18, a Technical High School student who recently moved to St. Cloud from Columbus, Ohio, went to the mall to visit his brother Dominic, 21, who works at Target, and was told to leave.
Shortly before 9 p.m., a St. Cloud police officer with an assault rifle could be seen near the west entrance of Macy’s.
Police executed search warrants for two apartments, including the apartment where Adan lived with his father, officials said.
Law enforcement officials are now treating the attack as suspected terrorism.
A short time earlier, St. Cloud Somali-American community members identified the deceased suspect as Dahir Adan.
“First of all, we salute the quick and heroic actions of Officer Jason Falconer who thwarted this attack from being even worse than it was”.
Two were charged in absentia after they left the U.S., while six others pleaded guilty and three were convicted in May.
College students Sydney Weires was shopping at the mall with friends when the attack happened. She says she saw a man who looked like a security guard sprint down a hallway, and then two men stumbled out.
‘They were screaming, “Someone’s stabbing people in the mall”, and people were just really frantic and were running’.
Anderson said police had had three previous encounters with the attacker, mostly for minor traffic violations.
An off-duty police officer shot and killed him.
The attacks shattered a sedate evening at Crossroads Center mall, the largest shopping centre in Minnesota outside Minneapolis and St. Paul.
FBI Special Agent in Charge, Richard T. Thornton, says the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force are working with St. Cloud Police and other agencies and are investigating the attack as a potential act of terrorism.
The FBI says it is assisting local police in the investigation into a man who stabbed and wounded eight people at a Minnesota mall.
“We are now investigating this as a potential act of terrorism”, said the FBI’s Richard Thornton, speaking at a news conference at the St Cloud Police Department headquarters.
They say the assailant, who has not been identified, made reference to Allah and asked at least one victim if he was Muslim.
In the meantime, police press on with piecing together the events surrounding the violence and are trying to learn more about the attacker, whose identity has yet to be released.
The Islamic State on Sunday claimed credit for the attack.
“The executor of the stabbing attacks in Minnesota yesterday was a soldier of the Islamic State and carried out the operation in response to calls to target the citizens of countries belonging to the crusader coalition”, the agency said. It’s unclear, however, if the terror group planned the attack or knew about it beforehand. It has also claimed past attacks that are not believed to have been planned by its central leadership.
Anderson said the man reportedly made at least one reference to Allah and asked a victim if they were Muslim before attacking them.
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A ninth victim drove himself to the hospital in Long Prairie and was initially unknown to officials. No further details were released. The attack occurred at the Crossroads Center in St. Cloud, a city of about 65,000 people 60 miles northwest of Minneapolis.
