COLUMBUS, Ohio – President-elect Donald Trump visited Ohio State University on Thursday afternoon to meet survivors of an attack that stunned the campus last month.
Trump spoke with victims in private and also met with the Ohio State police officer who killed the attacker, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, an Ohio State student who drove a Honda sedan through a crowd outside a school building before emerging from the vehicle and slashing at people with a butcher knife. Trump said the meeting was an “honor.” School officials said Trump also met privately with Ohio State president Michael Drake.
The FBI and local investigators are still working to determine what led Artan to the sudden violence, which left 13 people wounded. Authorities have said it appears Artan — who they described as a self-radicalized Somali Muslim refugee — planned the attack but those close to him apparently knew nothing of it ahead of time. An Ohio State police officer shot and killed Artan almost immediately after the attack began.
Ohio State spokesman Chris Davey said that Trump requested the meeting with victims of the attack and first responders who provided aid at the scene. He visited them at the Schottenstein Center, home to the Ohio State basketball team, across the Olentangy River from the campus’ academic core.
“Our nation’s leaders routinely make visits to Ohio State,” Davey said. “The university works to welcome these visits while minimizing disruption to the campus community.”
In an interview with The Lantern student newspaper on the first day of classes in August, Artan said that he had transferred to Ohio State after graduating from a nearby community college, and he expressed concerns about publicly displaying his Muslim faith during prayer times.
“I wanted to pray in the open, but I was scared with everything going on in the media,” Artan said, referring to recent incidents of Islamophobia. He also said in that interview that he had concerns about then-candidate Trump’s views and rhetoric on Islam and immigrants.
Artan’s late November attack sent shock waves across campus and throughout greater Columbus, home to one of the largest African immigrant communities in the country. Artan, a Somali who law enforcement officials said immigrated to the U.S. in 2014 after living for years in Pakistan, allegedly posted an online statement of support for Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical Islamic cleric killed in a 2011 drone strike but whose fiery sermons remain online as his digital legacy.
In the aftermath of the assault, the Islamic State claimed Artan as one of its “soldiers,” but U.S. authorities and experts said they don’t believe he had any direct connection to the terror group. Officials said that Artan appeared to be self-radicalized, and family and friends said they had no indication of the attack before it happened. FBI officials told The Post that Artan was unknown to the bureau before the attack.
Trump tweeted after the assault that “ISIS is taking credit for the terrible stabbing” and that Artan was “a Somali refugee who should not have been in our country.”
William Clark, an Ohio State professor emeritus of materials engineering who was injured in the attack, told The Post that he’s still recuperating from his wounds and was not planning to attend the meeting with Trump on Thursday. He also said that he’s reserving judgment about Artan’s motives.
“I wasn’t going to jump in and say he did this because he was a jihadist terrorist,” Clark said. “There may be a lot more to it than that. . . . What else might have sent him over the edge for him to decide to do it? I don’t think we know yet.”
The International Socialist Organization — Columbus hosted an anti-Trump rally near the Ohio State arena Thursday afternoon, which they called: “O H I O, Donald Trump has got to go!” The group said on its Facebook page that it wanted to show Trump that he is not welcome on campus.
“We reject the exploitation of a tragic event on our campus and the disrespect of our fellow students’ pain for Trump’s racist political purposes,” the group wrote.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post · Kevin Stankiewicz, T. Rees Shapiro
Image: GERRY BROOME / AP
