Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A man fatally shot by police outside an airport had two knives taped to the insides of his legs and his behavior was “consistent with someone who intended to hijack an aircraft,” a detective’s court filing says.
That behavior included concealing weapons beneath his trousers and trying to buy an airline ticket using a woman’s ID, according to the statement from a detective in the Columbus police counterterrorism unit. The statement was filed this week as investigators got a search warrant to review data on a cellphone linked to the case.
Besides the two “lock-blade style” knives, Hashim Hanif Ibn Abdul-Rasheed had more knives, a gas mask, other masks, computers, cameras and cellphones in his illegally parked SUV, the statement said.
Police said airport officers confronted Abdul-Rasheed after he returned to the vehicle outside Port Columbus International Airport on Jan. 7, and they repeatedly fired at him after he moved toward one officer with a knife.
The local police union leader said a bomb squad also found containers of frozen urine in the vehicle, an unexplained twist not mentioned in the detective’s court filing.
Abdul-Rasheed, of suburban Columbus, had a court-documented history of mental illness. After he tried to kill his mother in 1999, a court found him not guilty by reason of insanity and determined he was mentally ill and subject to involuntary hospitalization, Cuyahoga County court records show. He remained under court supervision for more than a decade.
Police responded frequently to disturbances at his apartment in the past year. His wife told police officers last summer that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and was not taking his medicine.
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