Authorities responded to a shooting Tuesday morning outside a CVS near Boston. (Photo: MyFoxBoston.com)
Police in Massachusetts arrested a man in connection with a counterterror investigation just hours after another man under round-the-clock surveillance by was shot and killed.
Usaama Rahim, 26, was shot outside a CVS Pharmacy in Roslindale, Mass. at approximately 7 a.m. local time Tuesday after the Joint Terrorism Task Force approached Rahim to question him about “terrorist-related information” they had received. When he moved toward officers with the knife, they opened fire.
A law enforcement source with intimate knowledge of the case told PPD that Rahim had been making terrorist threats against law enforcement personnel and their families.
Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said officers repeatedly ordered Rahim to drop the knife but he continued to move toward them, regardless. Evans said task force members hit Rahim once in the torso and once in the abdomen in controlled fire. Rahim was taken to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Another source also told WFXT that they had been investigating an “active plot” to harm law enforcement officials, which may have been inspired by the terror group ISIS. While PPD could not independently confirm the latter claim, the Islamic State has repeatedly called on “lone wolf” followers in the United States to attack law enforcement and military personnel.
Vincent Lisi, special agent in charge of the Boston FBI office, said authorities “don’t think there’s any concern for public safety out there right now.”
Commissioner Evans also said authorities knew Rahim “had some extremism as far as his views,” but did not approach him with guns drawn.
“Obviously, there was enough information there where we thought it was appropriate to question him about his doings,” Evans said. “He was someone we were watching for quite a time.”
Police video shows Rahim “coming at officers” while they are backing away, Evans noted, though the account differs from claims made by Rahim’s brother Ibrahim Rahim, who said in a Facebook posting that his youngest brother was killed while waiting at a bus stop to go to his job.
“He was confronted by three Boston Police officers and subsequently shot in the back three times,” he wrote. “He was on his cellphone with my dear father during the confrontation needing a witness.”
Ibrahim Rahim’s Facebook page claims he studied Islamic law at the Islamic University of-Medina KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), and that he currently works at a ministry that bares his name in Boston, Massachusetts.
“We are deeply grieved by the loss of my younger brother,” he wrote. “While we understand the need for information. We ask that the press give us time to grieve. We will have a statement once we have met as a family [sic].”
Meanwhile, officer and the agent involved in the shooting weren’t physically injured but were evaluated at a hospital for what Evans described as “stress.”
The Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center said its security firm hired Rahim as a security guard for a month in mid-2013, though he served only as a loss prevention officer at CVS. Executive director Yusufi Vali, the head of a center that has been surrounded by controversy in the past due to their connection to known jihadis, said Rahim didn’t regularly pray at the center and didn’t volunteer there or serve in any leadership positions.
Later Tuesday, the FBI and local police arrested a man at a home in Everett, Mass., in an action authorities said was related to the Roslindale shooting. Christina Diorio-Sterling, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, said David Wright was taken into custody from his home in suburban Everett. She said Wright will face federal charges and is expected to appear in U.S. District Court on Wednesday.
The FBI and Rhode Island State Police also searched a property in Warwick, R.I. in relation to the Roslindale shooting. Police sealed off a street, requiring anyone who lived there to show identification to pass the police cordon, though it was not immediately clear if they had anyone in custody.
A 17-year-old told the Boston Globe that police had asked him about a neighbor in his mid-20s named Nick. The teen told the paper Nick often wears long robes and prays in his front yard.
