Clueless in St. Cloud
18th September 2016
One of the many chilling moments in the terrorism trial in Minneapolis this past May was the presentation of a piece of evidence that passed in a flash without comment. The evidence was a photograph of one of the defendants dressed in the uniform he wore when he worked as a security guard (pretty much whenever he wanted) in the Twin Cities.
I think the photograph must have had the same effect on the jury as it did on me. It made me reflect on the the Alice-in-Terrorland world we have in Minnesota.
In the news today are the apparently jihadist stabbing attacks committed by a security guard in the Crossroads Center shopping mall in St. Cloud last night. (The afternoon the Star Tribune raised the possibility that the assaults were perpetrated against Muslims rather than by a Muslim. ISIS has claimed the perpetrator was “a soldier of the Islamic State.”)
The security guard was killed inside the mall by an off-duty police officer. The Star Tribune reports the story here. Eight people were taken to the hospital after the attacks; this morning, according to the AP, as many as three remain hospitalized.
The security guard seems to have declared the motivation for his attack by shouting “Allah” and trying to spare Muslims from his rampage. St. Cloud Chief of Police William Blair Anderson nevertheless refrained from hazarding a conclusion about the perpetrator’s motivation.