Everything we know about Fargo gunman Mohamad Barakat

FARGO — From an investigative perspective, Mohamad Barakat was like a ghost, authorities said.

The 37-year-old man who gunned down three police officers and a bystander on July 14 was asocial, had little social media presence, and his cellphone records listed just five calls in a recent week, according to North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley.

With the exception of a 2018 speeding ticket in Fargo, Barakat had no criminal record anywhere in the United States.

Originally from Syria, Barakat was granted political asylum and arrived in the U.S. in 2012, Wrigley said at a news conference on Friday, July 21.

Investigators aren’t aware yet if Barakat ever married or had children, or if he came to America with family.

In 2019, Barakat was naturalized as a U.S. citizen, Wrigley said.

Why Barakat ambushed police officers with a high-powered rifle on 25th Street South is still not known.

So far, investigators have found no manifesto or anything linking Barakat to terrorist groups, Wrigley said.

Due to his asocial nature and evidence from his cellphone and computer, authorities believe Barakat was a lone-wolf attacker who was not networking with any co-conspirators.

Wrigley said Barakat, at some point before the shooting, was in a federal report called a Guardian report and that there was talk of Barakat being on a terrorist watch list, although he was not on such a list. It's not clear what led Barakat to be mentioned in the Guardian report, which North Dakota's U.S. Attorney General Mac Schneider described as a way for the public to engage with law enforcement.

A federal website describes the FBI’s Guardian system as "a web-enabled counterterrorism incident management system that supports the FBI's role in defending the United States and its interests abroad from the threat of terrorism by receiving, assessing, disseminating, and retaining threats, suspicious activities, and events."

When asked if a member of the public ever reported Barakat on suspicions related to terrorism, Wrigley said: "Have not heard anything along those lines, it doesn’t mean it has never happened. I don't want you to take from that and say it doesn't exist. We're a week into the investigation."

At a local level, Fargo Police Chief Dave Zibolski has said police had interactions with Barakat before the shooting, but did not elaborate.

Barakat worked odd jobs, Wrigley said. For an unknown amount of time, Barakat was employed at Fleet Farm, 3730 36th St. S. in Fargo, a store that sells various items, including rifles, shotguns, handguns and ammunition. He was interested in setting up a trucking company shortly before he was killed, Wrigley said.

Barakat visited the Red River Regional Marksmanship Center, a West Fargo gun range, to practice his aim, said Terri Suchy, the center's operations manager. Barakat was "practicing his shooting skills" in the hours before the ambush, Wrigley said.

Wrigley said Barakat's web browser history showed searches for information on mass shooting events and how to shoot and injure people in specific ways.

The last website Barakat visited before the shooting was a news article with the headline "Thousands enjoy first day of Downtown Fargo Street Fair," the attorney general said.

On July 14, Barakat ambushed police officers as they dealt with a routine car crash near 25th Street and Ninth Avenue South.

The ensuing gunfight lasted roughly two minutes, killing Officer Jake Wallin and seriously injuring officers Tyler Hawes and Andrew Dotas. Barakat also wounded Karlee Koswick, a Boston-area woman who recently moved to Fargo. Officer Zachary Robinson ended the gunfight by shooting and killing Barakat.

In the car that Barakat drove to the ambush scene, investigators found three long rifles, 1,800 rounds of .223 caliber ammunition, a homemade grenade, a can of gasoline, explosives and other firearms, Wrigley said.

The explosives in Barakat's car were filled with large amounts of Tannerite, an explosive compound made from ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder. If Barakat had shot an explosive, it could have caused significant destruction, Wrigley said.

It's uncertain whether Barakat intended to create a diversion by ambushing the police officers before possibly heading to the street fair.

"I don’t know if he had a diversion in mind, but it would make sense though," Wrigley said.

The attorney general said Barakat "was looking for significant crowd events in the area. We do know he had a clear path, he was going to downtown Fargo."

Barakat may have been hoping to survive the attack and return home, Wrigley said.

“I have one indication, to me, that indicates that he did, that he hoped to (survive) ... in the means he would check to see if anyone had been to his apartment in his absence. He had a couple of different techniques in that regard, and they were employed in this instance,” Wrigley said, without elaborating.

C.S. Hagen / The Forum

Barakat's last residence in Fargo was Apartment 305 at Bluemont Village Apartments in the 2800 block of 23rd Avenue South. There, investigators found more guns and ammunition, Wrigley said.

A downstairs neighbor of Barakat’s, Nathan Johnson, remembered the balding, slightly overweight man, saying that their conversations went no further than greetings in the mail room.

Barakat previously lived in an apartment at 4255 9th Ave. Circle S., but current residents there told The Forum they didn’t know him. He lived there from 2015 until 2020, before he moved to Bluemont Village Apartments, according to online records.

At some point, Barakat had a cooking fire that brought firefighters to his apartment, Wrigley said.

In spring 2020, Barakat enrolled in the emergency medical services program at the Fargo campus of North Dakota State College of Science, said Lee Schwartz, the college's director of marketing. It's unclear if Barakat finished the program.

Leaders of Fargo-Moorhead's Muslim community told The Forum they did not know Barakat. When a family member made a request to local mosque leaders to handle Barakat’s funeral arrangements, the leaders refused, said Sajit Ghauri, an adviser to the Moorhead mosque known as the Moorhead Fargo Islamic Center.

Wrigley said Barakat was a Muslim and that investigators found a Quran in his apartment, but noted that authorities have not established any ties between him and the local Muslim community.

"At this point in the investigation, I find his Muslim faith no more notable than my Lutheran faith," Wrigley said.

The Syrian refugee crisis began in 2011, the year before Barakat arrived in the U.S. The conflict in Syria has since left hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced.

After the war began, Syrian refugees fled to neighboring Turkey, and then through the Balkans into Europe. When Syrians turned their eyes toward the United States for asylum, a large-scale political debate erupted, including in North Dakota.

In 2016, former President Barack Obama announced plans to allow about 10,000 Syrian refugees into the country. But after Paris terrorist attacks later that year, former North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple joined more than half the country’s governors and demanded that the flow of Syrian refugees be halted.

Those governors believed the federal government’s screening process was inadequate to weed out terrorists.