“St. Cloud is a very resilient community”.
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Mark Dayton spent the day in St. Cloud Monday to help the town heal and address citizen’s concerns.
Ryan Schliep, one of 10 people who suffered wounds that were not life-threatening before the attacker was fatally shot, told WCCO-TV that the man “just walked right at me” before striking quickly and penetrating the skin of his scalp.
Meanwhile, the Crossroads Mall is set to reopen today for the first time since a stabbing attack Saturday.
But it wasn’t immediately known whether the extremist group had planned the attack or knew about it beforehand.
In yet another possible terrorist attack at a USA shopping mall, a Minnesota police chief said the part-time officer who fatally shot a man stabbing people at the mall was “the right person, at the right place, at the right time” to prevent the attack from getting worse. Several Somalis said they saw pickups driving through predominantly Somali neighborhoods the night after the attack, waving confederate flags and honking.
Acknowledging it has shaken their community, both of these city leaders say it will not break it.
“People really need to be aware of their surroundings and especially in Sioux Falls we have a great community and we don’t have the big huge problems but you just never know when something could happen”, Clemens says.
Police officers did not definitively name Adan as the suspect, but his father, Ahmed Adan, and some in the city’s Somali American community identified him as the attacker. He was wearing his security firm uniform when he went on his rampant attack. We express our deepest sympathy and condolences to all those injured and others who were impacted as a result of the incident at the Crossroads mall.
Dahir A. Adan, 22, is said to be a Somalian “soldier of the Islamic State” who emigrated from Africa to the U.S. with his family 15 years ago.
St Cloud police chief William Blair confirmed nine people were wounded Nine people were left injured after suspect Adan asked victims if they were Muslim before assaulting them St Clouds Mayor describes “ISIS” mall attack in Minnesota St Cloud State University student Adan, who was born in Kenya but is of Somali descent according to his father, was felled at least twice by gunfire from an off-duty police officer. The state of Minnesota is home to a third of the more than 85,000 Somalian refugees resettled in the country, according to the US Census.
A member of the local Somali community identified the deceased suspect as Dahir Adan, of St. Cloud.
“I implore the citizens of St. Cloud and the citizens of Minnesota to rise above this incident and remember our common humanity”, Mr Dayton said. “We know it’s going to be a long winter for this community”, said Haji Yusuf, of the anti-racism group UniteCloud.
Lone wolf attacks are the most concerning acts of violence as they are hard to prevent.
Those who know Adan, 20, say he was a calm, cool guy with a good head on his shoulders. Complaints of mistreatment at a local high school prompted a federal civil rights investigation in 2011 and, though a 2011 agreement resolved that case, the U.S. Department of Education still was monitoring a year ago.
Saturday’s attack at Crossroads Center Mall is testing city and community leaders’ efforts to improve longstanding racial tensions, which flared up a few years ago when Somali-American high school students said they were being harassed and being called terrorists. Ahmed Adan said his son was born in Kenya but was Somali and had lived in the USA for 15 years. Police also said he was 20.
Adan then enrolled at St. Cloud State University with an intended major of information systems, and was roughly halfway through his studies, a school spokesman said. The officer who shot him was identified as Jason Falconer from the nearby Avon police department.
Avon police chief Corey Nellis said Mr Falconer owned a firing range and was the city’s firearms instructor. “If I had to ask anyone to fire live rounds in a crowded mall, with his training, I’d trust him”.
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KDLT News reached out to The Empire Mall Monday to speak about safety and security.
