New information about Somali attack on Minnesota woman
blows up police narrative by Leo Hohmann, 1/3/18
Morgan Evenson, 26, was attacked by
a Somali migrant Dec. 13 and stabbed 14 times before a pedestrian came to her
aid in uptown Minneapolis.
The tragic story of what happened to
Morgan Evenson two weeks before Christmas is starting to gain traction in
Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Ignored by the city’s largest
newspaper, the Star Tribune, a second local TV station picked up the story Tuesday
about the brutal attack by a Somali migrant that left the 26-year-old woman in
a hospital bed with 14 stab wounds and a lacerated kidney. See
my initial report on the attack last week, which went viral on Facebook and
Twitter
It’s been nearly three weeks since a
man described as a Somali immigrant attacked Evenson while she was walking home
from work in uptown Minneapolis, slashing and stabbing her relentlessly while
trying to drag her off of a public street. She did not know the man and has no
idea why he attacked her.
Police still haven’t made any
arrests in the case but say they are working multiple leads.
The fact that a Somali migrant
targeted a young white woman while walking alone, and that he remains on the
loose, has women watching their backs.
Several women told Fox 9
KMSP they are afraid to walk alone
on the streets of this popular shopping district that they previously thought
was safe. Watch Fox 9’s interview with Morgan
Evenson.
And now the victim herself is
speaking out, revealing new information about her attacker that cast doubt upon
the official police narrative about what happened that night.
Minneapolis police said after the
Dec. 13 attack that they considered it an attempted robbery.
Crime Prevention Specialist Jennifer
Neale told
the Southwest Journal on Dec. 20: “We’re still
scratching our heads about it, because it’s just so brazen,” noting the level
of violence used to “get a purse.” There’s only one problem with that
statement. Evenson says the man made no attempt to snatch her purse.
She fought back with all she had as
he continuously thrust his knife into her torso, wrists, arms and shoulders.
She resisted long enough for a male pedestrian to hear her screams and come
running to her aid, sending the Somali attacker fleeing.
After being released from the
hospital Evenson immediately moved out of state and said she fears for the
safety of her friends still living in uptown Minneapolis, where she worked at
the Apple Store in a shopping district that includes Victoria’s Secret,
high-end jewelry stores and coffee shops.
She said she got a clear look at her
attacker, whom she described as a black man in his early 20s, thin build,
low-cut afro and a slight Somali accent.
He sneaked up from behind and
tackled her to the ground, then started stabbed. “I would say it was two to
three minutes of struggling with him as he was dragging me through the snow,”
Evenson told Fox 9. “This person who did this to me is still out there. I don’t
know if he intends to do this to someone else, or if this was a one-time thing.
Was it because I was a woman? Was it the color of my skin? Was it the purse on
my shoulder even though you didn’t take anything from me?”
She said she lives for the day when
she could identify her attacker for the police. “I don’t want this to change
who I am because I don’t want to be a scared person but it would be so, so
amazing to have this person turned in and to look at him in the face and to
hopefully convict him of something.”
Despite Evenson’s clear description
of the man, police have still not released a composite sketch of the suspect,
which would seem to be a normal course of action in a case like this.
But the Minneapolis Police
Department is no stranger to controversy when it comes to cases that involve
Somali refugees. The city is home to the nation’s largest Somali-American
population, more than 50,000 strong, almost all of them hand-selected for
resettlement in the U.S. by the United Nations.
In August the fifth precinct’s first
Somali police officer, Mohamed Noor, shot and killed an unarmed white woman,
Justine Damond, but the department has yet to file any charges against the
officer.
In the summer of 2016 a band of more
than a dozen Somali men terrorized the city’s Linden Hills community for three
straight days, threatening to rape a woman, beating one resident’s dog, and
shouting “jihad!” as they drove vehicles over residents’ lawns and pretended to
shoot people through their duffel bags. No arrests were made.
And then there was the mysterious
2014 apartment explosion in a Somali neighborhood of Minneapolis in which three
people lost their lives. No arrests were ever made in that case either, nor any
explanation for the cause of the explosion.
None of this sloppy police activity
surprises former FBI counter-terrorism specialist John Guandolo. He says the
sheriff of Hennepin County is easily manipulated by Muslim activist groups such
as the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the local Somali imams.
“Minneapolis police and the
sheriff’s office there are so in bed with the jihadis they don’t know which way
is up,” Gondolo said.
That’s an accusation some might find
alarming and even too sensational to believe. Yet, the best evidence may be the
words coming directly from the mouth of Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek
three years ago at the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism,
comments that were captured
on video by C-SPAN.
Stanek told the White House Summit
in February 2015 that he basically gets all his information about what’s going
on in Minneapolis’s Somali neighborhoods from a local Somali imam he
affectionately referred to as “Imam Roble.”
Following is a transcript of Sheriff
Stanek’s presentation:
Hennepin
County Sheriff Rich Stanek with President Obama
“I’m so
glad you all had a chance to hear from Imam Roble. And we’ve been friends for
more than five years and any success the sheriff’s office has had in engaging
the Somali diaspora in Hennepin County is due largely to imam Roble and his
guidance, and his leadership,” the sheriff said. “At first traditional methods
for building communities of trust weren’t working. We had language and cultural
barriers that required new strategies. Translations were difficult at best. Men
didn’t want women at meetings. The greatest barrier of all? Somalis were
distrustful of law enforcement, because in their home country law enforcement
often operates as the arm of an oppressive government. The key to overcoming
these barriers was the one on one personal relationship between Imam Roble and
myself. After many conversations he agreed to help us, and lend credibility to
our efforts. Others trusted us, because he trusted us. He became our sponsor in
the community. Personally asked members to attend special one-day citizens
academies customized for the Somali community. The agenda? It was tailored to
fit the interests and needs of the community, with translators and culturally
appropriate meals, but we learned that it’s critical not to be seen as playing
favorites. We let everyone know that we’d be working with the entire community,
the elders, the religious leaders, women and youth. We followed up with actions
that demonstrated our commitment. We hired the first sworn Somali deputy
sheriff in Minnesota, we added a Somali community member as a civilian in our
community engagement team, Abdi Mohamed. He works every day in building
relationships between the community and my office. A Somali woman assisted us
in adopting a new policy on religious head coverings, hijabs, in our jail. This
new policy is just one way for my office to show we are not only listening, we
we’re acting. With imam Roble’s guidance I’ve learned that the most important
member of our community engagement team, is me. Our community members want and
need to be respected, this isn’t a job to be delegate to somebody else but a
responsibility to be shared throughout the entire agency, starting at the top.”
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