ST CLOUD, MN — (CNN) On Saturday night, Lul Hersi stood outside the Crossroads Mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, waiting to find out whether her son was among the nine people stabbed by a man who an ISIS-linked news agency praised as a “soldier of the Islamic state.”
Fear washed over the Somali-American mother, not just for her son’s well being, but also because of the potential backlash that might follow against her community.
“This has been a dark day; it is a day we will never forget,” said Hersi. “ISIS does not represent us. It does not represent Islam, and it does not represent Somalis.”
The man, whom local media reports said was of Somali descent, stabbed nine people at the Minnesota mall before being shot dead by an off-duty police officer. The following day the Amaq agency posted a statement online, the latest in a series of ISIS-related media outlets claiming responsibility for purported attacks carried out by individuals across Europe and beyond this year.
CNN cannot independently this latest claim. Likewise, St. Cloud Police Chief William Blair Anderson told CNN Sunday he was unable to confirm if the mall stabbings were anything more than a lone attack.
“Right now, we’re trying to get to the bottom of his motivations,” Anderson said.
The FBI is calling the attack “a potential act of terrorism.”
Community leaders fear anti-Muslim backlash, call for unity
Over the weekend, local newspapers in Minnesota, including the Minneapolis StarTribune and St. Cloud Times, identified the attacker as a member of the Somali community from the central part of the state.
St. Cloud, a 67,000-person town about 65 miles northwest of Minneapolis, is home to one of Minnesota’s larger immigrant Muslim communities. In recent years, the Muslim community there has faced conflicts with other Minnesota residents, including incidents that have led to damage to existing mosques and opposition toward at least one new house of worship, according to the StarTribune.
In response to this weekend’s stabbing, members of the Muslim and Somali communities held a news conference Sunday to mourn the victims and call for unity.
“We are also concerned about the potential backlash,” said Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) chapter in Minnesota. “We understand in St. Cloud there is more anti-Muslim organizing and we hope they do not use this incident to divide [our community].”
Ahmed Said, executive director of the Somali American Relations Council, said it remained unclear if religion motivated the attack. While he confirmed the attacker as Somali, the Minneapolis StarTribune quoted him as saying, authorities have not confirmed the attacker’s ethnicity. CNN was also unable to confirm if he was Somali.
In recent years, federal investigators have tracked in Minnesota the recruitment of potential ISIS fighters. Since 2014, nine Somali-Americans from Minnesota were either convicted at trial or pleaded guilty in a plot to join ISIS by traveling to Syria. Before that, dozens of male Minnesota residents had left to join Al-Shabaab, a terrorist group working to turn Somalia into an Islamist state.
With potential backlash set to follow the stabbing, Mohamoud Mohamed, a spokesman for the Central Minnesota Islamic Center in St. Cloud, said at the Sunday news conference the Muslim community in central Minnesota has no ties to any Islamic terrorist groups.
“We are the victims of those terrorist groups,” he said. “Islam is peace.”
[van id=”us/2016/09/18/minnesota-mall-multiple-stabbing-suspect-dead.cnn”]
The attack at the mall
Police and witnesses said the attacker, wearing a private security company uniform, entered Crossroads Mall on Saturday night around 8 p.m. CT. Inside the mall, he made a reference to Allah and asked at least one person if they were Muslim before he attacked.
Ashley Bayne, an employee of JCPenney at the mall, was visiting a coworker at the time of the incident. When the stabbings started, occurring in several locations including some stores, Bayne ran out to the parking lot and took off in her car, crying and shaking in the aftermath of an event she never thought would happen at the mall.
“All of sudden chaos just broke out,” Bayne told CNN. “There was a bunch of people running into the JCPenney mall entrance, and they were just screaming that someone was going around the mall stabbing people, and that there was blood everywhere.”
Though mall’s security teams were on site, they were not armed.
Of the nine people stabbed, St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis said three people were still hospitalized, including one person who remained in life-threatening condition.
He’s ‘clearly a hero’
Amid the chaos, Jason Falconer, an off-duty police officer from nearby Avon, killed the suspect as he threatened other shoppers.
While authorities have not yet identified the stabber, they say he had three previous encounters with police. According to Anderson, most of the encounters were for minor traffic violations, none of which led to an arrest. The police chief declined to provide further details about the attacker until more information was known.
But at a news conference Sunday afternoon, the mayor and police chief praised Falconer, a part-time officer and a former police chief of Albany, Minnesota, for stepping into action. Both officials said they had viewed a surveillance tape from a Macy’s store which revealed details of the confrontation.
“His heroic actions are exemplary of having witnessed what he did as the suspect was lunging at him with a knife,” Kleis said. “Not only did he fire, the suspect went down, came back up on three different occasions. He protected others from being injured and potentially loss of life. Clearly, a hero.”
City changed forever
The Crossroads Mall is expected to reopen Monday. Beyond that moment, though, Anderson said the attack will change the city forever.
“Whenever something as awful as this happens, it’s hard for things to be the same as they were,” Anderson said.
The mall stabbing was one of several incidents reported nationwide Saturday. In New York City, an explosion ripped through the Chelsea neighborhood, leaving 29 injured. A second suspicious device was found a few blocks away, authorities say.
In neighboring New Jersey, an explosion went off in a garbage can on the route of a Marine Corps charity run. Thousands of people were about to participate in the 5K race in Seaside Park. No injuries were reported.
After the stabber was confirmed dead, the police chief said two search warrants were executed at an address in St. Cloud, and the suspect’s vehicle has been impounded. Though the case may be closed soon, Anderson didn’t see things going back to normal.
For Hersi, she simply hoped just the tragedy would offer an opportunity to bring St. Cloud residents together — rather than divide them further.
“Let us unite as one Minnesota,” Hersi said. “Please let’s spread love instead of hate.”
The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2016 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved. (PHOTO: stormchasingvideo.com via CNN)
