It was a warm night in Minneapolis, June 2016. Abdirahman Hassan and his friends had just finished playing basketball. They were young, Somali men, walking down a Dinkytown sidewalk together, on their way to prayers.
It was Ramadan. Hassan says the night felt eerie. They noticed a group of people coming out of a bar were watching them, sizing them up, noticing their traditional clothes for the holiday. The plan was to get out of there, and not engage. Then one of them looked them dead in the eye and said “f! Muslims.”
The five of them just got into their car. They didn’t want any trouble. But as they started driving away, they heard it again. “F! Muslims.” Hassan slowed the car down and addressed the stranger.
“Why would you guys say something like that?” he asked.
The stranger put his head right next to the window. “I said fuck Muslims. What are you guys going to do about it?”
The next thing any of them knew, the stranger was standing about 10 feet in front of their car, holding something.
“Is… is that a gun?” Hassan asked. “…Oh my God, that’s a gun.”
The stranger said he had a license to carry, and that he was going to kill them. Hassan ducked and put the car in gear. He heard a bullet whiz past his head. In the backseat, his friend, Hussein Gelle, looked down and saw blood pouring out of his leg. They quickly drove off. They couldn’t head to prayers anymore – they had to get Gelle to a hospital. On their way there, Abdulahi Aden, who had been worrying about how much Gelle was bleeding, looked down and noticed his leg was covered in blood, too. The car interior was soaked in the stuff by the time they arrived at the University of Minnesota Medical Center.
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