Authorities didn’t identify the attacker. The identification of Adan came from his father, Ahmed Adan, who spoke to the Star Tribune of Minneapolis through an interpreter. Ahmed Adan said his son was born in Kenya but was Somali and had lived in the U.S. for 15 years. Local activists also identified Dahir Adan as Somali.
Ahmed Adan said police told him around 9 p.m. Saturday that his son had died at the mall, and that police had searched 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.
Police had had three previous encounters with the attacker, mostly for minor traffic violations, Anderson said.
A spokesman for St. Cloud State University confirmed that Adan was a student there, but had not been enrolled since the spring semester. Spokesman Adam Hammer said Adan’s intended major was information systems, which is a computer-related field.
Anderson said the man began attacking people right after entering the mall, stabbing people in several spots inside. The victims included seven men, one woman and a 15-year-old girl.
Five minutes after authorities received the first 911 call, Jason Falconer, a part-time officer in the city of Avon, shot and killed the attacker. Anderson said Falconer fired as the attacker was lunging at him with the knife, and continued to engage him as the attacker got up three times.
“He clearly prevented additional injuries and potential loss of life,” Anderson said. “Officer Falconer was there at the right time and the right place,” he said.
The attack in St. Cloud, a city of about 65,000 people, began shortly after an explosion in a crowded New York City neighborhood injured 29 people. A suspicious device was found a few blocks away and safely removed. Hours before that, a pipe bomb exploded in Seaside Park, New Jersey, shortly before thousands of runners were due to participate in a charity 5K race. There was no immediate indication that the incidents were linked.
The mall was expected to reopen Monday after being closed Sunday.
Photos and video of the mall taken hours after the incident showed groups of shoppers waiting to be released, including some huddled together near a food court entrance.
Sydney Weires, 18, and two of her friends were shopping when the stabbings happened. Weires said she saw a man who appeared to be a security guard sprinting down the hallway, and then two men stumbled out.
“One was covered in blood down his face,” she said, and the other man had blood on his back. “They were screaming, ‘Get out of the mall. Someone has a knife,’” Weires said.
Falconer, who was shopping when he confronted the attacker, is the former police chief in Albany, which is about 15 miles northwest of St. Cloud, and the president and owner of a firing range and firearms training facility, according to his LinkedIn profile. His profile says he focuses on firearms and permit-to-carry training, and also teaches “decision shooting” to law enforcement students at St. Cloud State University.
No one answered the door late Sunday at a home address listed for Falconer, and a voicemail box for a telephone listing was full and not accepting new messages. In a brief interview with the Star Tribune, Falconer said he had “been trying to stay away from it all, for the time being.”
He told the newspaper he wasn’t hurt and declined to talk further, citing the ongoing investigation for not saying more.
