Dahir Adan had been in a “joyful” and “happy” mood on Saturday before he went to a St. Cloud, Minnesota, mall to buy a phone, a community leader told CNN on Monday.
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“We haven’t uncovered anything that would suggest other than a lone attacker at this point”, St. Cloud Police Chief Blair Anderson said at a news conference. All they could think about was that off-duty officer. None of the nine people suffered life-threatening wounds.
The attack is being investigated as “a potential act of terrorism”, Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Rick Thornton told reporters. In New York, an explosion ripped through the Chelsea neighborhood, leaving 29 injured.
Hours earlier, a pipe bomb exploded in a garbage can in Seaside Park, New Jersey, shortly before a scheduled charity race benefiting Marines and Navy sailors. There was no immediate indication the incidents were linked.
“We do not at this point in time know whether the subject was in contact with, had connections with or was inspired by a foreign terrorist organization”, Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent Rick Thorton said at a press conference on Sunday.
Minnesota harbors the largest Somali population in the United States, counting for up to 40,000 individuals.
The speed with which IS weighed in may also say something about a competition for recruits between the Middle East-based IS and the east Africa-based militant group al-Shabab, which has recruited Somali-Americans from Minnesota with some success in recent years.
Marc Holley, who runs Atlas Defense, a firearms training business in Minneapolis, said the good-guy-with-a-gun argument only holds up if the good guy has been trained to shoot from various distances, take into account what’s behind the intended target and communicate with law enforcement to avoid being mistaken for the bad guy. 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 US soil has been a major concern for law enforcement.
Last year St Cloud school officials met Somali parents, community elders and students after Somali-American students walked out to protest about their treatment.
St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis said surveillance footage shows the suspect go down and come back up three times as Falconer fires his weapon. 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.
But it wasn’t immediately known whether the extremist group had planned the attack or knew about it beforehand.
Olat says the local madrasas, reiligious Sunday schools, closed after the attack.
His father, Ahmed Adan, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that he had “no suspicion” of his son being involved in any terrorist activity.
The attacker, wearing a private security company uniform, entered Crossroads Mall on Saturday night around 8 p.m. “It’s a community coming together and trying to figure things out on their own”, he says. And he had nothing more than a minor traffic citation on his record. “St. Cloud is filled with hard-working, right-thinking, decent people – and we’re going to be stronger because of this”, he said. “I want to know everything about this man, from the day he was born until last Saturday”.
Then, without a word, the man raised his arm and stabbed Schliep in the head, causing him to fall to the ground.
Falconer is a former police chief of Albany, Minnesota and now works part time as an officer in Avon.
“He clearly prevented additional injuries and potential loss of life”, Anderson said.
Since Falconer has not been on the police schedule for some time, he has not been put on administrative leave.
The Crossroads Mall is expected to reopen Monday.
Weires and her friends were able to leave the mall before authorities enforced a lockdown. “We need to sit down, understand what’s going on with our children, help them understand who they are”, she said. “No one is talking right now”, one man said from the doorway of his apartment.
NBC2 reached out to mall management multiple times Monday to ask if they’re planning any security changes after Saturday’s attack, but they have not responded. “Someone has a knife, ‘” Weires said.
Avon Police Chief Corey Nellis said at a news conference Monday that Jason Falconer “was the person who needed to be there”. His profile says he focuses on firearms and permit-to-carry training, and also teaches “decision shooting” to law enforcement students at St. Cloud State University.
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No one answered the door Sunday at a home address listed for Falconer, and voicemail for a telephone listing was not accepting new messages.
