Let cooler heads (and kinder hearts) prevail. That is what we must try to remember after the knife attack Saturday, Sept. 17 at St. Cloud’s Crossroads Center mall.
It was an unsettling experience to tune into CNN TV national news last Sunday and see St. Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis and St. Cloud Police Chief William Blair Anderson talking at a press conference about a multiple stabbing attack in St. Cloud.
It was a stark reminder that attacks by terrorists and/or lone-wolf individuals can happen anywhere, including right her in our midst. In a grim irony, a pressure-cooker bomb exploded in New York City on the same day, as well as an explosion also that day at a Marine Corps charity run in New Jersey. Fortunately, nobody was gravely injured or killed (except for the St. Cloud perpetrator) in any of the three attacks.
We can only imagine the terror endured by the victims. Our sympathy goes out to them and their loved ones.
The St. Cloud stabbing spree is still under investigation. What is known is that a St. Cloud State University student named Dahir Ahmed Adan is the perpetrator of the attacks and was killed by an off-duty Avon police officer who was shopping at Macy’s at Crossroads Center for a birthday gift for his son. The officer, identified as Jason Falconer, who happened to be at Crossroads, likely prevented further mayhem.
The Somali-American community released a statement expressing sympathy for the 10 victims and their families, as well as for Adan’s St. Cloud family. Adan was described as an excellent student who attended Apollo High School. He was a junior at St. Cloud State University and worked part time as a private security guard (not for Crossroads, however). Somali-American leaders said they have no idea why Adan would commit such an act of violence.
There were reports from people in the mall that Adan had shouted something about “Allah” and had asked at least one person if that person is a Muslim. Investigators are trying to determine if the attack was triggered via some kind of allegiance to ISIS terrorists. On the ISIS “news agency” Sunday, a propaganda bulletin claimed Adan was “a soldier of the Islamic State,” but such claims are typical of ISIS, even in cases of violence where there is no connection whatsoever to international terrorism.
Somali-American leaders in the St. Cloud area are expressing fears of retaliation against Somali immigrants of Adan’s violent actions. Such fears are not unfounded because there have been social-cultural tensions in recent years between some Caucasians and some Somali-Americans.
That is why we must not leap to conclusions about the perpetrator’s motives or lack of them. If it’s determined there was a sinister motive of terrorism behind his attacks, we must remind ourselves it was only one man committing such senseless violence.
The very last thing the greater St. Cloud area needs is emotional overreactions of fear, hostility and distrust. Such a climate fuels gossip, mean-spirited speculations, inaccurate conclusions and more fear-mongering. Violence easily rears its ugly heads in such a volatile climate. Hatred begets hatred.
Instead, we should reach out to one another across social-cultural-ethnic differences and forge healthy bonds, not dangerous divisionism.
