Video
(04:22) : Surveillance video from the St. Cloud mall attack on Sept. 17
shows Dahir Adan attacking people with a knife and his encounter with
an off-duty officer.
ST. CLOUD – Before he took up his knives, Dahir Adan delivered a haunting farewell — and warning.
"You won't
be seeing me again," the 20-year-old Somali refugee told a SuperAmerica
clerk as he stepped out into the night of Sept. 17.
An hour
later, Adan was dead, shot down by an off-duty police officer after Adan
hacked and slashed his way through the Crossroad Center mall with a
steak knife in each hand. Ten people were stabbed and left bleeding, an
entire community was terrorized.
At a news
conference Thursday, investigators spelled out in detail just what
happened in the mall that Saturday night, even as they still search for
the reasons why. While they have yet to establish a solid link between
Adan and a terrorist group, they said victim and witness interviews,
store video, and Adan's words and actions in the minutes before and
during the stabbings pointed to a premeditated attack.
Authorities
pulled out detailed maps, with red dots marking the spots where each
person was stabbed: one dot for the pregnant woman in the parking lot;
two for the father and son Adan ran down in the hall; another for the
clerk he chased in the electronics store, demanding to know whether his
victim was Muslim as he stabbed at him so hard that the knife bent on
impact.
There were
videos from mall surveillance cameras, showing Adan, dressed in his
security guard uniform from work, chasing terrified shoppers. A
quick-witted clerk in a candy shop slammed down the security grate just
as Adan lunged toward him, knives clearly visible in his hands.
The final
moments of Adan's life were captured on camera, from many angles, as he
repeatedly charged off-duty police officer Jason Falconer, who was in
the mall shopping. The videos show Adan lunging, falling, advancing
again and eventually crawling across a bloodied floor toward Falconer
with six bullets in his body and a knife still visible in his hand.
Sullen and withdrawn
It was
only recently that Adan's once-promising life veered off-course, FBI
Special Agent in Charge Richard Thornton told reporters Thursday.
"Almost
overnight," Thornton said, Adan changed from a bright college student
interested in basketball and video games into a sullen, withdrawn young
man with an intense interest in Islamic studies. He went from top grades
to flunking out of school. He lost weight, lost interest in his old
pastimes and started chiding the young women in his family to be more
devout.
It added
up to a pattern that suggested to the FBI that Adan "may have been
radicalized," either on his own or with the help of others.
Investigators have spent the past 19 days interviewing more than 180
people who knew him, viewing hundreds of hours of video and tracing his
digital footprints and trying to unlock his phone, hoping to find where
the pattern began.
"An
increased interest in Islam is not, in and of itself, evidence of
radicalization," Thornton said. "But when combined with the other
indicators and Adan's violent rampage ... one could reasonably conclude
his actions were consistent with the philosophies of violent, radical
Islamic groups."
The
Islamic State claimed credit for the attack within hours of Adan's
death. The latest issue of an ISIL magazine, Rumiyah, published earlier
this week, mentioned Adan's attack in a roundup of recent "Operations"
executed around the world. It referred to Adan as a "soldier of the
Khalifah," or caliphate, who carried out his attack "in response to the
calls to target the citizens of the nations involved in the Crusader
coalition."
The
article included a photo of ambulances stationed outside the mall. The
Minnesota stabbing was the only American attack referenced, despite
high-profile incidents in New York, New Jersey and Washington state last
month. In the magazine's English version, a two-page "exclusive"
details how to carry out knife attacks, down to suggesting which knives
to avoid.
"It is
explicitly advised not to use kitchen knives, as their basic structure
is not designed to handle the kind of vigorous application used for
assassinations and slaughter," the article reads.
Shooting justified
While
authorities Thursday laid out many of the details of Adan's attack, they
also cleared Falconer of any wrongdoing in Adan's death.
Falconer
acted swiftly and appropriately after he found himself face-to-face with
a knife-wielding man who demanded to know if he was a Muslim, Stearns
County Attorney Janelle Kendall said.
Falconer, a
former police chief who owns a local shooting range and works part-time
as an officer for the Avon Police Department, told Adan "No," he wasn't
a Muslim. After Adan turned and left, Falconer, who was off duty and in
plain clothes, drew his weapon, identified himself as an officer and
followed Adan, shouting at him to drop his weapons.
Several
times Falconer showed his badge to reassure shoppers who were frightened
by the sight of a man in plain clothes who was pointing a gun at a man
dressed as a security guard, Kendall said. The chase led to Macy's,
where the cameras captured Adan as he repeatedly lunged at Falconer.
Kendall said the clerks and shoppers in Macy's heard Falconer identify
himself again and again as a police officer and order Adan to drop the
knives.
Before
sharing the graphic details of Adan's final hours with the public,
investigators shared them with his stunned and grieving family. The
family "cannot reconcile their view of a loving son with what has been
presented by law enforcement," said their attorney, Abdulwahid Osman.
There had
been rumors in the community that Adan might have been provoked, or that
there might have been a confrontation at the mall that sparked the
attack. But investigators described a much more calculated buildup,
beginning at 3 p.m. that Saturday, when Adan came home from his job as a
security guard and didn't remove his uniform. He told his family he had
work to do that evening, but later texted his boss and told him he
wouldn't be coming in.
Adan made
his final trip to the gas station, delivering his ominous farewell to
the clerk, just before 8 p.m. He returned home briefly, then headed to
the mall, just minutes away. Along the way, he hit a cyclist hard enough
to send the rider rolling across the hood of his car, but Adan never
stopped. Investigators later found the cyclist's glasses lodged on the
car hood.
Adan then
ran a red light before pulling into the mall's south parking lot at 8:13
p.m. A minute later, St. Cloud fielded the first 911 call from the
mall. Ninety-three more would follow.
Reporter Stephen Montemayor contributed to this report.
jennifer.brooks@startribune.com 612-673-4008
faiza.mahamud@startribune.com 612-673-4203
p.walsh@startribune.com 612-673-4482
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