You may have already heard about this case. It took place about a month ago in Fargo, North Dakota. A group of police officers were responding to the scene of a minor car accident. There didn’t seem to be anything dangerous about the call at all but suddenly a man named Mohamad Barakat, who wasn’t involved in the accident, got out of his car and unleashed what sounded like automatic rifle fire on the three police officers who were only about 15 feet away at the time. All three officers were hit and went down as well as a woman who had been involved in the accident. Officer Jake Wallin, just 23-years-old, died at the scene. The other two officers were released from the hospital earlier this month.
There was one other officer at the scene that day who happened to be walking in the street inspecting one of the cars involved in the accident. When the shooter started firing, he ducked behind the car, instantly radioed for backup and then fired several shots at Barakat.
The shooter was apparently hit but backed around his own car and seconds later returned another volley of shots at the remaining officer whose name was Zach Robinson. As soon as those shots stopped, Robinson came out from behind the back of the car and advanced. He keyed his radio again, “We’ve got three officers down. Send everybody.” You can here the extreme stress in his voice but it doesn’t stop him from charging the shooter.
As he approaches the car, the shooter is laying down on the ground but still moving. Robinson orders him to stop moving and put his hands up. Instead a few seconds later Barakat raises his rifle again. Robinson fires three more shots which strike him. He then backs up and changes out his magazine. That done, he advances again and sees Barakat is still on the ground and now has a 9mm in his hand. He yells “Drop the gun!” and when Barakat doesn’t reply he fires eight more shots.
Still, Barakat is moving. Robinson yells for him to drop his gun several more times and then moves around the back of Barakat’s car. As he comes around the back, Barakat is still holding the 9mm and Robinson fires five final shots which finally kill Barakat. In all, police say that officer Robinson fired 31 shots, 21 of which hit Barakat. Here’s the full video from Officer Robinson’s bodycam.
BREAKING: Body cam footage of the shooting ambushing Fargo Police officer has been released. pic.twitter.com/9HwK96B7Bm
— Harrison Krank (@HarrisonKrank) August 17, 2023
How was the gunman able to fire so fast? He had modified the rifle with a binary trigger:
A binary trigger is a modification that allows a weapon to fire one round when the trigger is pulled and another when it is released — in essence doubling the firing capacity, firearms experts and weapons manufacturers say.
The modifications are relatively inexpensive, running a few hundred dollars depending on the model.
What’s really strange about this case is that no one has yet said what the shooter’s motive was. His car was loaded with weapons, including some handmade explosives and police believe he might have been planning some sort of mass shooting in the area:
After the shooting, investigators found numerous guns, 1,800 rounds of ammunition, a homemade grenade and explosives in Barakat’s vehicle.
However, authorities had no new information Thursday as to what was Barakat’s motive.
Authorities have said Barakat’s internet queries over the past five years included “kill fast,” “explosive ammo,” “incendiary rounds,” “mass shooting events,” and one for “area events where there are crowds,” which brought up a news article with the headline, ”Thousands enjoy first day of Downtown Fargo Street Fair,” a day before the shooting…
Barakat was a Syrian national who’d been living here since 2012. He became a nationalized citizen in 2019 and had no criminal record in the US. His guns were all purchased legally. So far there’s no evidence he was in contact with any terrorists here or abroad.
He had, however, been reported to something called the Guardian Threat Tracking System. The FBI routinely opens what it refers to internally as assessments — the lowest level, least intrusive and most elementary stage of a terrorism-related inquiry — when it receives unconfirmed information about potentially suspicious behavior.
That information is catalogued in the Guardian system. During the assessment stage of an investigation, FBI agents are permitted to take certain basic investigative steps such as conducting online research or visual surveillance, but more sophisticated tools such as wiretaps cannot be undertaken without additional evidence of wrongdoing.
So this guy was being watched and police had been to his house a year earlier to interview him about his weapons, but he hadn’t done anything violent until that day last month. While his exact motive isn’t clear the best guess at this point is that he was planning to start a rampage that would have lasted much longer and likely targeted many civilians if Officer Robinson hadn’t shot and finally killed him.
