Ohio State cop credits training for helping him neutralize car-and-knife attack on campus
Channel: WOLF X
Date: 2017-11-28

Ohio State cop credits training for helping him neutralize car-and-knife attack on campus

 Ohio State University police officer Alan Horujko describes how he stopped 18-year-old Abdul Razak Ali Artan. Artan crashed a car into a campus crowd and then attacked people with a butcher knife before Horujko fatally shot him. Ohio State University
Ohio State University police officer Alan Horujko says some timely training helped him minimize the bloodshed in a car-and-knife attack last year that could have been far worse.

Horujko said in a video released that lessons he learned from going through a simulated scenario where he role-played dealing with a knife-wielding attacker just weeks before the incident were still fresh when he responded to the gruesome attack by 18-year-old Abdul Razak Ali Artan. The video of Horujko was released on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the incident that rattled Ohio's flagship university campus.

Artan crashed a car into a campus crowd and then lashed out with a butcher knife before he was fatally shot by Horujko. Federal authorities say the Artan was at least partly inspired by anti-U.S. rhetoric spewed by the Islamic State terror group as well as the slain Al Qaeda propagandist Anwar Awlaki. 

Thirteen people were injured in the attack before Horujko gunned down Artan, a Somali-born college student who had expressed anger over the persecution of Muslims on social media before the attack. 

Horujko credits his training with keeping his "whole world from collapsing in on me” as he was forced to quickly calculate whether to use deadly force.

“It seems like the stars aligned in some way to put me right there where I was needed to protect those people," Horujko said.

The comments from Horujko, 29, who has declined media interview requests, were released by the university along with previously undisclosed police reports, recording of calls to 911 dispatchers and body-camera footage from another officer who arrived at the incident and interviewed witnesses of the attack.

University officials said there was no body-worn camera or police cruiser dashboard camera recordings of the attack itself. In addition, no campus surveillance cameras in the area captured images of the crime scene, according to Ohio State spokesman Benjamin Johnson.

The Ohio State incident was one of several similar attacks carried out by Islamic militants over the last year, who have used vehicles as weapons.

Last month, eight people were killed and 11 injured after an attacker drove a rented truck onto a busy bicycle path in Lower Manhattan. The attacker then emerged from the vehicle and screamed “God is Great” in Arabic before he was shot. In August, at least 13 were killed and 130 more were injured when a attacker drove a van into pedestrians in Barcelona. A similar fatal incident played out in Stockholm in April when an attacker drove a hijacked beer truck into a department store in Sweden’s capital.

Horujko just had happened to be nearby when Artan barreled a Honda into the crowd on the first day of classes following Thanksgiving break. The 29-year-old cop had volunteered to be dispatched to the area to assist firefighters who had evacuated a building due to a gas leak unrelated to the attack, according to police reports.

The officer said the incident played out in slow motion.

As the incident unfolded, he initially thought it was some sort of medical emergency that led the driver to plow into the crowd. But as he got closer — and noticed the driver’s side door open and no one behind the wheel — he said he recognized something was wrong.

Horujko chased after Artan. The area was crowded and he didn’t have an immediate opportunity to stop him without potentially hurting others.

“He was kind of going up and down the street diagonally, running away from me, chasing anybody he could reach, slashing pretty wildly at everybody,” he said.

He repeatedly yelled at Artan to drop the knife. But Horujko said it wasn't clear if the suspect even heard him at first. Eventually, about 100 yards from where Artan crashed his car, the suspect — who had been chasing  a woman — turned and charged Horujko, who then opened fire.

The officer's engagement with the suspect lasted less than a minute, but Horujko said it felt like a half hour.

He said that didn’t remember hearing the sound of his gun fire. But through the ordeal, he could hear the voices in his head of his trainers who walked through the simulated scenario involving a knife-wielding suspect a month earlier.

car-and-knife attacks
ISIS
ramming vehicles
Ohio State University
 Alan Horujko
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