The Somali-born student who injured nearly a dozen people in a car-and-knife attack at Ohio State University showed few signs of bitterness despite what must have been a difficult early life, and he even danced onto the stage when he graduated from community college.
Abdul Razak Ali Artan was fatally shot by a university police officer when he refused to drop his knife during Monday’s attack. Those who knew him say he always said hello to his neighbors in the low-rent apartment complex where he lived with his mother and siblings on the city’s west side.
The 18-year-old stopped in frequently at a nearby convenience store for snacks and attended a local mosque.
He had graduated with honors from Columbus State Community College last May, earning an associate of arts degree. A video of his graduation ceremony shows him jumping and spinning onto the stage and smiling broadly, drawing laughs, cheers and smiles from graduates and faculty members.
He transferred to Ohio State to get his bachelor’s degree and gave an interview to the university’s student newspaper in August, saying he was looking for a place to pray openly and worried how he would be received.
Yet leaders of the mosque say they don’t remember Artan, and Ohio State’s Muslim and Somali student groups say he wasn’t affiliated with their organizations.
“None of us could recognize his face,” said Horsed Noah, director of the Abubakar Assiddiq Islamic Center, a mosque around the corner from Artan’s apartment.
Artan was not known to FBI counterterrorism authorities before Monday’s attack, Angela Byers, the FBI’s special agent in charge in Cincinnati, said Wednesday.
On the day of the rampage, Artan got ready to attend classes as always, even dropping his young siblings off at their school first.
“He woke up and he went to school,” said Hassan Omar, a Somali community leader who spoke with Artan’s mother Monday.
The first time she knew something was wrong, Omar said, was when police showed up at her doorstep.
Sometime that morning, Artan bought a knife at a nearby Wal-Mart and posted a series of Facebook rants showing he nursed grievances against the U.S.