Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the 18-year-old Ohio State University student who last November rammed a car into a group of pedestrians before attacking people with a large knife, might have been influenced by the Islamic State group, but he was not directed by them.
That’s according to a news release from the FBI issued on Tuesday, the first anniversary of the attack perpetrated by Artan, a Somali refugee who injured 13 people in the attack.
The short release from the FBI thanked local police departments for their work before making three basic points:
- The substantive federal investigation has concluded.
- The evidence from the extensive investigation indicates the perpetrator acted alone and was not directed by a terrorist organization.
- The perpetrator appears to have been influenced by extremist ideology, including Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) propaganda.
On the morning of Nov. 28, 2016, Artan drove his car into a crowd of students outside Watts Hall and began attacking them with a butcher knife.
In a videotaped interview released on Monday, Ohio State officer Alan Horujko—who was on campus responding to a reported gas leak when the attack happened—said he had gone through training for a knife attack just a month prior.
After a brief chase, Horujko shot and killed Artan outside of a campus building on Woodruff Avenue.
“All I knew was people were being hurt, and I didn’t like that,” Horujko said.
A Franklin County grand jury cleared Horujko this summer. While 13 students and faculty were injured, no one except Artan was killed.
