update deskU.S. News

‘Planned attack’ of Orthodox man in Chicago, prosecutor says

The Cook County, Ill., prosecutor’s office said Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi researched Jewish targets and had pro-Hamas material on his phone.

Stock illustration of a gavel. Credit: Pixabay.
Stock illustration of a gavel. Credit: Pixabay.

Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi, who allegedly shot an Orthodox man as he walked to synagogue on Shabbat in Chicago last month, used his cellphone to search for synagogues and Jewish community centers to target, Fox News reported.

Abdallahi, who is being investigated for hate-crime and terror charges, also had more than 100 “antisemitic and pro-Hamas” images and videos on his phone, the Chicago Sun-Times reported, citing police. Officers found the suspect’s phone in his car after he allegedly engaged in a two-and-a-half-minute shootout with them.

In Abdallahi’s first court appearance, prosecutors stated that the suspect’s cell phone data showed that the shooting was premeditated.

“This was not anything but a planned attack,” Anne McCord Rodgers, the assistant state’s attorney in Cook County, Ill., said, per the Sun-Times. “An attempted assassination of these people.”

“This was a calculated plan, on a public street,” she added, “and an attempted slaughter of that person and law enforcement officers.”

Prosecutors said Abdallahi used his phone to map a synagogue one block from where the shooting took place and another synagogue in Hyde Park.

Two weeks prior, his Google search history included “Jewish Community Center” and a gun store in suburban Lyons, according to prosecutors.

An immigrant from Mauritania, Abdallahi had lived in the United States for “at least two years” and worked at an Amazon warehouse, according to Josh Thigpen, the assistant public defender, per the Sun-Times.

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