The identity of the person who attacked other students at the Ohio University campus Monday has been revealed. According to CBS, the attacker was Abdul Artan, an 18-year-old student at the university. He was a Somali refugee who left his homeland with his family in 2007, lived in Pakistan and then came to the United States in 2014 as a legal permanent resident of the United States, officials said.
He posted a rant shortly before he plowed a car into a campus crowd and stabbed people with a butcher knife in an ambush that ended when a police officer shot him dead, a law enforcement official said.
Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 18, wrote on what appears to be his Facebook page that he had reached a “boiling point.”
“America! Stop interfering with other countries, especially Muslim Ummah (community). We are not weak. We are not weak, remember that,” the post said.
Artan left at least 11 injured – one of whom is in a critical condition – after he drove onto the sidewalk at the university on Monday afternoon, mowing down the crowds of innocent bystanders, witnesses say.
He then jumped out of the car and began slashing victims with a butcher knife, according to police. While the motive for the attack is still under investigation, but there are questions about whether Artan, who was Muslim, may have carried it out in jihad.
Artan, reportedly a logistics management student, was interviewed by the school’s magazine, The Lantern, back in August about his faith. In the piece, he said that he struggled to find a private place to pray on campus, after transferring from Columbus State Community College, which had such facilities.
Artan said:
‘This place is huge, and I don’t even know where to pray. I wanted to pray in the open, but I was kind of scared with everything going on in the media. ‘I’m a Muslim, it’s not what the media portrays me to be. If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don’t know what they’re going to think, what’s going to happen’.
He was shot and killed by the police at the scene.
