Chicago Police superintendent Larry Snelling announced that the city is adding a felony terrorism charge and a hate crime charge to the 14 felony charges it brought against Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi, 22, who is accused of shooting a 39-year-old Jewish man as he walked to synagogue on Shabbat, as well as firing at police officers and paramedics on Oct. 26.
“Since this shooting occurred, our investigative response team has worked their fingers to the bone to determine a motive. There must be sufficient evidence to support hate crimes and terrorism charges, and it was important we took our time to thoroughly investigate and confirm that this was indeed a crime of that nature,” Snelling said at a press conference on Thursday at Chicago Police Dept. headquarters.
“I want to be clear about one thing, and I want to make this clear to everybody here, everybody in every community: We did not secure these charges because of public pressure or because of media attention,” the superintendent said. “The responsibility that we have in law enforcement is that we will never go out in public, make statements, allegations, accusations, or attempt to bring charges without any proof of what we’re attempting to charge someone for.”
“This shooting is deeply personal to members of our Jewish community — we know that — but this shooting should be personal to everyone across the city,” Snelling added. “We have a diverse city. We live in a very diverse city, and anytime someone suffers violence, especially a shooting, we should be outraged no matter where it occurs in our neighborhoods and across our city.”
Snelling said that investigators couldn’t interview the suspect due to injuries he sustained in a two-and-a-half-minute shootout with police officers.
“Detectives sifted through digital evidence to establish this case,” he said. “Evidence from the offender’s phone indicated he planned the shooting and specifically targeted people of Jewish faith. This evidence allowed us to secure the terrorism and hate crime charges.”
Snelling spoke alongside Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Kim Foxx, the state’s attorney for Cook County, Ill. The mayor has faced intense criticism from the Chicago Jewish community for issuing a statement days after the shooting, which didn’t note that the victim was visibly Jewish. Police did not initially announced hate crime charges among the 14 felony charges.
“There is absolutely no place in Chicago for anti-Semitism. There’s no place in our city for hatred directed towards our Jewish community,” Johnson said at the press conference.
“Now that the charges have been issued, I can speak with more specificity about the attack that took place that was clearly motivated by hatred, hatred towards our Jewish community,” the mayor said. “It is not only hideous. It is wicked.”
Johnson said that as a city leader, husband and father that “it grieves me and it breaks my heart, knowing that our Jewish community doesn’t feel safe and secure in our beloved city.”
“This is not just an attack against our beloved community of Jewish people, it’s an attack against us as a city,” he said. “Anti-Semitism in Chicago does not reflect the soul of Chicago. Everyone in our city deserves to feel safe.”
Foxx, the county attorney, referred to the “extraordinary nature” of the terror charges, which she said refer to an action that wasn’t just “spur of the moment,” but were intended to cause terror in a specific community.
Sarah Van Loon, Chicago regional director of the American Jewish Committee, told JNS that “since Saturday, Chicago’s Jewish community has been seeking reassurance that authorities were investigating this attack as a hate crime, because we were deeply concerned that a member of our community was violently targeted.”
“With that said, we continue to urge a thorough investigation so that justice can be served,” she said.
Abdallahi’s scheduled appearance in court on Tuesday was delayed, while he remains in the hospital, and he now slated to appear in court on Nov. 7, Foxx said.
“We are a strong, united and resilient community and we will remain that way,” Debra Silverstein, the alderman of Chicago’s 50th Ward, said of Jews. Silverstein, who is Jewish, thanked Chicago Police for their efforts, but did not thank the mayor.
Abdallahi, who was hit multiple times during a two-and-a-half minute shootout with police officers, has been assigned a public defender, NBC 5 Chicago reported.
The defendant reportedly entered the country illegally.
