A man who stabbed four people at UC Merced last year before he was fatally shot by police appears to have been inspired by the militant group Islamic State but acted alone, the FBI said Thursday.
The FBI released a statement saying a review of Faisal Mohammad’s electronic devices found that he drew inspiration from terrorist propaganda and may have been “self-radicalized” before the Nov. 4, 2015, attack.
“His laptop contained pro-ISIL propaganda, and he had visited ISIL and other extremist websites in the weeks prior to his attack,” the agency said, using an acronym for the extremist group, which is also called ISIS.
The FBI said Mohammad, a freshman at the university from Santa Clara, began his preparations for the rampage at least a week beforehand. No information was found that showed he was helped or directed by another person or group in carrying out the stabbings, the FBI said...
Mohammad’s apparent inspiration by Islamic State marks a sharp contrast to what the sheriff said last year: that Mohammad was angry about getting kicked out of a study group...
In Thursday’s statement, the FBI signaled a note of uncertainty: “It may never be possible to definitively determine why he chose to attack people on the UC Merced campus.”
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