Obama said there was no known connection between that attack and bombings in New York City and New Jersey over the weekend. Student organizers say the goal of the event was to change the national image of St. Cloud that has been disseminated this week. Police also said he was 20. The Star Tribune earlier reported Adan’s age as 22, based on his father speaking through an interpreter.
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Smaller Somali populations have settled in rural pockets of Minnesota, while Minneapolis has the state’s largest Somali population; conflict between those residents and the state’s majority population seem to occur less frequently than in Minnesota’s smaller cities.
“It would kind of make me feel a little more safe if they had a metal detector at the door”, said Gove.
In the past decade, Minnesota has struggled with terrorist groups luring some of its young Somali men overseas. Roughly a dozen people have left in recent years to join militants in Syria. I am deeply grateful to the heroic law enforcement officer, whose swift response prevented an even worse attack.
Karen Greenberg, the director of the Fordham Law School’s Center on National Security in NY, says some militant groups are more reluctant about associating themselves with attackers unless it is clear they adhere to their core beliefs.
“If it happens in St. Cloud, it could happen in Fargo”, Mayor Tim Mahoney said.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, and called Adan a soldier of theirs – a statement that baffled authorities here.
“Something triggered it. We don’t know what”, Alimad said of the attack.
Ahmed says Dahir was born in Somalia and lived in the US the last 15 years. Local activists also identified Dahir Adan as Somali.
“I never expected I would hear anything like this about him”, Mohamed said.
The president on Monday echoed Federal Bureau of Investigation officials, who have said they’re investigating Saturday’s stabbing of nine people at a St. Cloud mall as a potential act of terrorism.
“In my opinion, with his training and abilities, he was the right person, in the right place, at the right time”, Avon Police Chief Corey Nellis said, according to the St. Cloud Times.
A spokesperson for St. Cloud State University confirmed that Adan was a student majoring in information systems, but hadn’t enrolled since the spring semester.
Haji Yussuf said the Somali community strongly condemns Adan’s actions.
A community leader said he had gone to the mall to buy an iPhone 7 and worked as a private security firm employee. The victims included seven men, one woman and a 15-year-old girl.
St. Cloud Hospital spokeswoman Chris Nelson said Sunday that the other five people were released and that none of the three still at the hospital has injuries that are considered life-threatening. The identification came from his father Ahmed after the younger Adan was shot by off-duty police officer Jason Falconer.
At the Mall of America in Bloomington, one of the world’s largest shopping malls and often mentioned as a possible terror target, officials said in a statement that “we have implemented additional police and security measures during this time”.
Crossroads Center reopened Monday morning with an increased security presence.
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.
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.
“As part of our investigation, we are looking carefully at possible motivations as to why Mr. Adan engaged in that attack”, spokesman Kyle Loven told AFP.
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She says one had blood on his face, and the other had blood on his back. “They were screaming, ‘Get out of the mall”.
