I was off the grid traveling much of the day, so I didn’t follow in live time the apparent terror incident at Ohio State University where a Somali legal immigrant rammed his car into pedestrians on the sidewalk, then attacked with what is variously described as a butcher knife or machete.
As in many such incidents, initial reports were confused and inaccurate. As Mary detailed in her live coverage, the story started as a shooter on the loose, until the facts sorted themselves out in the media.
Here is the latest from NBC News, Suspect Identified in Ohio State Attack as Abdul Razak Ali Artan:
An Ohio State University student 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,” made a reference to “lone wolf attacks” and cited radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.”America! Stop interfering with other countries, especially Muslim Ummah [community]. We are not weak. We are not weak, remember that,” the post said….A police officer was on the scene within a minute and killed the assailant, likely saving lives, university officials said. “He engaged the suspect and eliminated the threat,” OSU Police Chief Craig Stone said.Law enforcement officials told NBC News that Artan 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.
When I heard the story of the car ramming and knife attack, my mind immediately went back to the recent so-called Knife Intifada in Israel, in which car rammings played a prominent role, as I documented in The long list of Palestinian car rammings.
In that post I listed dozens of car rammings from early October 2015, generally considered the start of the current wave of terror, through July 11, 2016, including videos.
The Ohio State attacked reminded me in particular of this attack where a Palestinian terrorist in Jerusalem rammed a bus stop with his car then got out with a meat cleaver and started slashing a man. It took several shots from a passerby to stop the attack:
Apparently the police have a video of the entire Ohio State attack, but it has not been released yet. I expect it will look much like the Jerusalem attack above.
It will be interesting to see the reaction to the shooting of the perp. When Israeli police shoot Palestinians in the act of car ramming or stabbing, there is an outcry from Palestinians and international “human rights” groups accusing Israel of “extrajudicial executions” and threats to take Israel to the Hague for war crimes.
Unfortunately, when it comes to terrorist tactics, what happens in Israel doesn’t stay in Israel.
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