Associated Press
ST. CLOUD, Minn. – A man in a private security uniform stabbed nine people at a Minnesota shopping mall, reportedly asking one victim if they were Muslim before an off-duty police officer shot and killed him in an attack the Islamic State group claimed as its own.
None of the nine people who were stabbed in Saturday night’s attack received life-threatening wounds, St. Cloud police Chief Blair Anderson said. 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.
At a news conference Sunday, FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Rick Thornton said the attack was being investigated as a possible act of terrorism, and agents were still digging into the attacker’s background and possible motives.
An Islamic State-run news agency, Rasd, claimed Sunday that the attacker was a “soldier of the Islamic State” who had heeded the group’s calls for attacks in countries that are part of a U.S.-led anti-IS coalition.
It was not immediately clear if the extremist group had planned the attack or even knew about it beforehand. IS has encouraged so-called “lone wolf” attacks. It has also claimed past attacks that are not believed to have been planned by its central leadership.
Authorities didn’t identify the attacker, but The Star Tribune of Minneapolis said the man’s father identified him as Dahir A. Adan, 22. Speaking to the newspaper through an interpreter, Ahmed Adan, whose family is Somali, said his son was born in Africa and had lived in the U.S. for 15 years.
A spokesman for St. Cloud State University confirmed that Adan was a student there, but has not been enrolled since the spring semester. Spokesman Adam Hammer said Adan’s intended major was information systems, which is a computer-related field.
The suspect’s father said police told him at around 9 p.m. Saturday that his son had died at the mall, and that police had raided the family’s apartment, seizing photos and other materials. He said police said nothing to him about the mall attack, and that he had “no suspicion” that his son had been involved in terrorist activity, the newspaper reported.
Anderson said police had three previous encounters with the attacker, mostly for minor traffic violations.
