COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A Somali-born Ohio State University student plowed his car into a group of pedestrians on campus and then got out and began stabbing people with a butcher knife Monday before he was shot to death by an officer. Police said they are investigating whether it was a terrorist attack.
Eleven people were hurt, one critically.
The attacker was identified as Abdul Razak Ali Artan. He was born in Somalia and was a legal permanent U.S. resident, according to a U.S. official who wasn’t authorized to discuss the case and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The FBI joined the investigation.
The details emerged after a morning of confusion and conflicting reports, created in part by a series of tweets from the university warning that there was an “active shooter” on campus and that students should “run, hide, fight.” The warning was prompted by what turned out to be police gunfire.
Numerous police vehicles and ambulances converged on the 60,000-student campus, and authorities blocked off roads. Students barricaded themselves inside offices and classrooms, piling chairs and desks in front of doors, before getting the all-clear an hour and a half later.
Ohio State University police Chief Craig Stone said the assailant deliberately drove his small gray Honda over a curb outside an engineering classroom building and then began knifing people. A campus officer nearby because of a gas leak arrived on the scene and shot the driver in less than a minute, Stone said.
Angshuman Kapil, a graduate student, was outside Watts Hall when the car barreled onto the sidewalk.
“It just hit everybody who was in front,” he said. “After that everybody was shouting, ‘Run! Run! Run!’”
Student Martin Schneider said he heard the car’s engine revving.
“I thought it was an accident initially until I saw the guy come out with a knife,” Schneider said, adding the man didn’t say anything when he got out.
Most of the injured were hurt by the car, and at least two were stabbed, officials said. One had a fractured skull.
Columbus police Chief Kim Jacobs, asked at a news conference whether authorities were considering the possibility it was a terrorist act, said: “I think we have to consider that it is.”
Rep. Adam Schiff, of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that while the bloodshed is still under investigation, it “bears all of the hallmarks of a terror attack carried out by someone who may have been self-radicalized.”
“Here in the United States, our most immediate threat still comes from lone attackers that are not only capable of unleashing great harm but are also extremely difficult, and in some cases, virtually impossible to identify or interdict,” he said.
Ohio State’s student newspaper, The Lantern, ran an interview in August with a student named Abdul Razak Artan, who identified himself as a Muslim and a third-year logistics management student who had just transferred from Columbus State in the fall.
He said he was looking for a place to pray openly and worried about how he would be received.
“I was kind of scared with everything going on in the media. I’m a Muslim, it’s not what media portrays me to be,” he told the newspaper. “If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don’t know what they’re going to think, what’s going to happen. But I don’t blame them. It’s the media that put that picture in their heads.”
In recent months, federal law enforcement officials have raised concerns about online extremist propaganda that encourages knife and car attacks, which are easier to pull off than bombings.
The Islamic State group has urged sympathizers online to carry out lone-wolf attacks in their home countries with whatever weapons are available to them.
In September, a 20-year-old Somali-American stabbed 10 people at a St. Cloud, Minnesota, shopping mall before being shot to death by an off-duty officer. Authorities said he asked some of his victims if they were Muslim. In the past few years, London and other cities also have seen knife attacks blamed on extremists.
Neighbors say Artan was always polite and attended daily prayer services at a mosque on the city’s west side.
Leaders of Muslim organizations and mosques in the Columbus area condemned the attacks while cautioning people against jumping to conclusions or blaming a religion or an ethnicity.
“It is particularly heartbreaking to see this random act of violence come to this community I hold so dear,” said Nicole Ghazi, who is active in Islamic organizations and is an Ohio State graduate.
Surveillance photos showed Artan in the car by himself just before the attack, but investigators are looking into whether anyone else was involved, the campus police chief said.
The bloodshed came as students were returning to classes following the Thanksgiving break and Ohio State’s football victory over rival Michigan that brought more than 100,000 fans to campus on Saturday.
“There were several moments of chaos,” said Rachel LeMaster, who works in the engineering college. “We barricaded ourselves like we’re supposed to since it was right outside our door and just hunkered down.”
LeMaster said she and others were eventually led outside the building and she saw a body on the ground.
Classes were canceled for the rest of the day.
The officer who gunned the attacker down was identified as 28-year-old Alan Horujko, a member of the force for just under two years.
The initial tweet from Ohio State emergency officials went out around 10 a.m. and said: “Buckeye Alert: Active Shooter on campus. Run Hide Fight. Watts Hall. 19th and College.” University President Michael Drake said the warning was issued after shots were heard on campus.
“Run, hide, fight” is standard protocol for active shooter situations. It means: Run away if possible; get out of view; or try to disrupt or incapacitate the shooter if your life is in imminent danger.
___
Associated Press writers Alicia A. Caldwell and Eric Tucker in Washington, Collin Binkley in Boston and Mark Gillispie in Cleveland contributed to this story.
ORIGINAL STORY:
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Eight people were sent to hospitals Monday morning with non-life threatening injuries after an attack on the Ohio University campus, fire and hospital officials said after the school sent a series of tweets telling students to shelter in place and to “Run Hide Fight.”
It was not clear how they had been hurt.
Four people were being treated for non-life threatening injuries at the university’s Wexner Medical Center, said Sherri Kirk, a hospital spokeswoman.
Two were being taken to OhioHealth Grant Medical Center and two others were at OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital, according to those hospitals.
Cassidie Baker, an Ohio State senior, said she saw police or paramedics helping one person on the ground outside Watts Hall.
“No one really knows what is happening, other than there’s an active shooter,” she said.
Ohio State said about an hour and a half after sending out a series of tweets about an active shooter on campus that a shelter-in-place warning had been lifted and the scene was secure. The university tweeted that all classes would be canceled for the rest of the day.
Around 10 a.m., the university’s emergency management department tweeted “Buckeye Alert: Active Shooter on campus. Run Hide Fight. Watts Hall. 19th and College.” Watts Hall is a materials science and engineering building.
“Run, hide, fight” is standard protocol for active shooter situations. It means: Run, evacuate if possible; hide, get silently out of view; or fight, as a last resort, take action to disrupt or incapacitate the shooter if your life is in imminent danger.
The university followed up with another tweet: “Continue to shelter in place in north campus area. Follow directions of Police on scene.” The university asked for anyone with information to call police.
Many police vehicles were at the scene. Police also blocked off roads around the perimeter of the campus, clogging area traffic.
With nearly 60,000 students at its main Columbus campus, Ohio State is one of the nation’s largest universities.
Like BlackAmericaWeb.com on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.
(Photo Source: AP)
Ohio State University Attack May Be Linked To Terrorism was originally published on blackamericaweb.com
