The man charged with shooting an Orthodox man on his way to synagogue in Chicago last month had mapped out the locations of several synagogues and Jewish schools shortly before the attack, prosecutors revealed on Friday, according to reports from Chicago-based news outlets.
At a detention hearing in Leighton Criminal Courthouse, Chicago, prosecutors revealed that Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi, 22, had researched potential targets on his cellphone in the days before the shooting, including a synagogue located near where the shooting took place.
Two weeks before the shooting, his Google history showed he had looked up “Jewish Community Center” as well as a gun store, according to Assistant State Attorney Anne McCord Rodgers.
His phone also had over 100 “antisemitic and pro-Hamas” videos and images, the prosecutor added.The hearing marked the first time Abdallahi, an immigrant from Mauritania, had appeared in court after he was hospitalized with gunshot wounds following a shootout with police on the day of the attack.
McCord Rodgers said, “This was not anything but a planned attack… an attempted assassination of these people. This was a calculated plan, on a public street… and an attempted slaughter of that person and law enforcement officers.”Judge Susana Ortiz ordered that he be detained on multiple accounts including attempted murder and hate crime.
The shooting
Abdallahi had allegedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” before shooting at police responding to the initial shooting of a 39-year-old Jewish man. The phrase is Arabic for “God is Great” and in the West, it has become associated with Islamist or jihadist terrorism as it is sometimes used during attacks.
Police had initially not filed hate crime charges, citing a lack of evidence, but subsequently discovered new information, leading Police Supt. Larry Snelling to announce the hate crime charge at the end of October.
Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois posted on X/Twitter, “This attack on a Jewish man in Chicago during the Jewish holidays is unacceptable. Antisemitism is on the rise in America, and we must remain laser-focused on rooting it out. I stand with the Jewish community in Chicago and across the country.”