A student at Ohio State University was shot dead after injuring eleven students, one critically, by hitting them with his car and eventually slashing passers-by with a knife.
The 60,000 student campus remained on lockdown for about an hour whilst students took cover in classrooms and locker rooms.
The student, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, was a recent transfer to the university from Columbus State. Artan was fatally shot by officer Alan Horujko after failing orders to halt the attack. Artan was a legal US resident, and a Muslim of Somali descent. The intentions of the attack are still not known, but police say they are investigating the possibility of terrorism.
Still no evidence has been found that links Artan to any radical groups or ideologies, and although no terrorist groups have claimed responsibility for the attack, the Islamic State was updating its online audience on Monday’s attack.
The attack on Monday was the most recent mass-casualty attack over the past decade on an American college campus. Students were told to “Run Hide Fight” to stay safe, an instruction that came from a training program used by the university to be used in active shootings.
Before the attack, Artan had posted the following message on Facebook:
“By Allah, we will not let you sleep unless you give peace to the Muslims,” he wrote. “You will not celebrate or enjoy any holiday.”
Artan also urged America to “to stop interfering with other countries, especially the Muslim Ummah,” a term for the greater Muslim community. Last summer, Artan had been interviewed for the student newspaper, The Lantern. Artan complained about being afraid to pray in public as a Muslim, because of the negative connotations of the religion. Artan explained in his interview that he wanted everyone to understand that not all Muslims are radical, and that he did not want people to judge him because of his religion.
An Ohio State senior, Mohamed Farah, was not at the scene of the attack, but feared the days after the attack.
“When I first heard that he was Somali, I mean my stomach did fall,” he says. “Not just because of what happened today, but because of what will happen tomorrow,” he said.
Farah, who is a Somali refugee and a Muslim, said that there is a common aftermath on campus following attacks that are blamed on terrorism.
“Those Somali men and women, the ones that wear a headscarf or the ones like myself with the name Mohamed, tomorrow will be a day of trepidation.”