Early Monday morning, an Ohio State University student drove his car into a group of students before exiting his vehicle and attacking several of them with a butcher knife.
The attacker was later identified by the Ohio State Department of Public Safety as 20-year-old Abdul Razak Ali Artan.
According to CNN, at 9:45 a.m. EST, Artan drove his car into a group of pedestrians on the curb near Watts Hall on the OSU campus. He then got out of the car and started stabbing the pedestrians with a butcher knife. 11 people were injured during the two-minute-long attack.
OSU University Police responded immediately to the attack, according to an official statement, with UPD Officer Alan Horujko shooting and killing Artan after he failed to comply with commands.
Artan was born in Somalia, but was living in the United States as a legal permanent resident. He had just transferred to OSU from Columbus State and was a logistics major.
In an interview with the OSU newspaper, the Lantern, Artan said he was having a hard time adjusting to his new school and was worried about expressing his Muslim faith.
““I’m new here. This is my first day. This place is huge, and I don’t even know where to pray. I wanted to pray in the open, but I was scared with everything going on in the media. I’m a Muslim, it’s not what the media portrays me to be.” he said. “If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don’t know what they’re going to think, what’s going to happen. But, I don’t blame them. It’s the media that put that picture in their heads so they’re just going to have it and it, it’s going to make them feel uncomfortable. I was kind of scared right now. But I just did it. I relied on God. I went over to the corner and just prayed.”
Following Monday’s attack, OSU canceled classes for the rest of the day. The campus is expected to be open as usual today.
