Fox News: The California college student who stabbed four people last month in a campus spree that ended when he was killed by campus police was described by his roommate as “an extreme Muslim” and carried a manifesto and a photocopy of an ISIS flag — more than enough to convince John Price he was a terrorist.
Yet, more than a month after the Nov. 4 attack at University of California Merced, local and federal authorities continue to insist that Faisal Mohammad, 18, carried out the vicious attack because he’d been banished from a study group. Price, whose son Byron Price, a 31-year-old construction manager for the family business who was working nearby and was stabbed when he heroically intervened, suspects the White House’s reluctance to identify acts of radical Islamic terror has trickled down to investigators who are still probing the Merced attack.
“Why don’t we just call it what it is — domestic terrorism?” said Price. “Everyone is afraid to be politically incorrect. I do believe in law enforcement and believe they will do their job, but it seems like to me we aren’t getting the whole story. I just wonder how much of this is driven from way higher up and is politically driven — I just don’t know.”
Mohammad, whose victims all survived, left behind a rambling, two-page manifesto in which he instructed himself to “praise Allah” as he worked his way through his hit list, a photocopied ISIS flag and at least one shaken roommate who remembers him as a menacing loner.
“He was a loner and an extreme Muslim,” Ali Tarek Elshekh, Mohammad’s roommate, told Merced Sheriff’s Department Detective Jose Silva in a statement, also noting Mohammad was “way out there.”
Elshekh, who is Muslim, told sheriffs that a friend of his had asked Mohammad what would happen if he touched the mat he used for praying, and got a chilling response.
“I will kill you,” Mohammad calmly vowed, in what Elshekh said was not a “normal” response for a Muslim.
Elshekh, whose statement was included in a warrant obtained by FoxNews.com through a Freedom of Information Act request from the Merced Superior Court, said he last saw Mohammad just minutes before the attack, sitting on his bed in their dorm room, dressed in a hooded sweater, hood over his face, with his backpack on his back, staring straight ahead in silence.
The warrant, which authorized detectives to search Mohammad’s dorm, car and other possessions, showed investigators found a second copy of the manifesto in Mohammad’s garbage can, along with several discarded petroleum jelly cans, duct tape wrappers, large zip ties, a package that had contained a knife and sharpener, a red prayer rug and a copy of the Koran.
Authorities believe Mohammad, who carried out his attack with an 8-inch hunting knife, planned to steal a gun by overpowering a campus cop and then take several more victims. Price was credited with slowing his attack, providing a chance for others to escape and helping to ensure that police ended the onslaught before anyone was killed. To his father, Price helped stop a terrorist.
