[Updated (11/28/2016, 10:20 p.m.) with higher injury toll.]
An Ohio State University police officer shot and killed a student on Monday morning after the suspect drove a car into pedestrians on the campus, and then emerged with a butcher knife and began stabbing them, according to The Columbus Dispatch. Eleven people were injured in the attack, one critically.
OSU Emergency Management identified the suspected attacker as Abdul Razak Ali Artan, a logistics-management major. According to the Associated Press, Mr. Artan was born in Somalia and was a legal U.S. resident. He graduated in May with an associate degree from Columbus State Community College and began attending Ohio State this fall.
Students received an emergency alert just before 10 a.m. stating that an active shooter was on the Columbus campus near Watts Hall (although the police would say later that there was no indication the suspect had used a gun):
Within a minute of the attack, Officer Alan Horujko arrived at the scene and shot the suspect. Classes were canceled for the remainder of the day, and the campus remained on lockdown until authorities could confirm that there was no further risk.
President Michael V. Drake said in an interview on Monday that students had reacted quickly because they are required to go through active-shooter training as part of orientation. When the lockdown order was issued, the students fled or took shelter and communicated with others about the protocol. They even accompanied strangers to the emergency room for moral support, said Dr. Drake, who is a physician.
Kimberly Jacobs, the Columbus chief of police, said that officers would “consider the potential” that Monday’s incident was terrorism and that state and federal investigators would look into the suspect’s communications ahead of the attack.
In August, the student newspaper, The Lantern, profiled Mr. Artan, and he described himself as a Muslim and spoke of his fear of praying in public: “I’m a Muslim, it’s not what the media portrays me to be.”
The Associated Press reported that leaders of Muslim organizations and mosques in Ohio were heartbroken by the attack, which they condemned.
Dr. Drake said that he was hopeful that Ohio State’s students would “act maturely” in the wake of Monday’s attack, given the present atmosphere of heightened racial tensions and the rise in campus hate crimes since the U.S. presidential election.
