Minnesota mall attacker was recent college student, security guard

A young Somali man dressed as a private security guard entered the Crossroads Center mall over the weekend wielding what appeared to be a kitchen knife.

In an attack that took just minutes, he injured 10 people before he was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer.

“As we mourn the death of our son, Dahir Adan, who was very dear to us, we are in deep shock as everyone else is in the state of Minnesota”, the statement said.

While a motive for Saturday night’s attack isn’t clear and it isn’t clear whether the attacker was radicalized, authorities in Minnesota have struggled for years to stem recruiting of young Somali men by the Islamic State and east Africa-based militant group al-Shabab.

Adan was a Somali refugee who came to the U.S.as a baby, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

President Barack Obama said this morning that the FBI is investigating the incident “as a potential act of terrorism”.

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.

This kind of attack feeds into the fears being whipped up by Donald Trump, who earlier Saturday was mournfully depicting a nation full of families with “empty chairs at the dinner table” because illegal immigrant criminals are being allowed to run free. “People were emotional. They were crying”, a witness said.

Minnesota harbors the largest Somali population in the United States, counting for up to 40,000 individuals. 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 previous year. “We would like to say loud that our community in central Minnesota has no relationship with ISIS or any other Islamic terrorist group”.

Adan, who was described by community members as an honor roll student in high school and a man who helped his family, reportedly asked victims if they were Muslim before stabbing them, and lunged at Avon police officer Jason Falconer before being shot.

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. A statement from Securitas said he resigned from the company in June.

St. Cloud’s police chief has said it seems Adan acted alone.

A man who was stabbed in the back during a knife attack at a St. Cloud mall that injured nine others says he begged his attacker not to kill him.

Falconer owns a firing range and is the firearms instructor for the city of Avon. “If I had to ask anyone to fire live rounds in a crowded mall, with his training, I’d trust him”.

Earlier in the day, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and St. Cloud Police searched two separate apartment units in the same building less than two miles from the mall.

Falconer was not at the news conference.

The mall remained closed Sunday.

Uniformed security guards are visibly present at a Minnesota shopping mall that has reopened after a man stabbed nine people in what authorities are investigating as a potential terrorist incident.

At this point, there is no intelligence that links the Minnesota incident to incidents involving explosive devices in NY and New Jersey over the weekend, he said at a press conference.

Benedictine Sister Michaela Hedican, the head of the nearby St Benedict’s Monastery in St. Joseph, who attended the news conference, said she felt “profound sadness” when she learned about the attacks.

Dahir Adan, 22, is seen in a Facebook photo.

The city of St. Cloud is located about 65 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

“To me, in watching it, it looks like a training video for law enforcement – what law enforcement should do”.