FBI: UC Merced attacker inspired by ISIS

The FBI says the college freshman who attacked four people at the University of California Merced last year was "self-radicalized" and had no ties to co-conspirators or foreign terrorist organizations.

On Nov. 4, 18-year-old Faisal Mohammad of Santa Clara, California, stabbed a fellow student inside a classroom at UC Merced, then attacked three other students as he fled, The Guardian reports. Mohammad was shot and killed by responding police officers, and all of his victims survived. The FBI says investigators found pro–Islamic State propaganda on his computer, and discovered that Mohammad visited several websites linked to ISIS and other extremist groups in the weeks prior to the attack.

Mohammad was carrying a backpack during the attacks, containing a photocopy of an ISIS flag, zip ties, a glass breaker, a knife, and a handwritten statement "detailing his intentions to include taking hostages and killing students and police officers," the FBI says. While the FBI determined that he was almost certainly working alone and inspired by ISIS, "it may never be possible to definitively determine why he chose to attack people on the UC Merced campus."

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