Days before he stabbed a man to death in downtown Minneapolis, Abdirahman Osman Yusuf charged at a Metro Transit worker with a cane as she was waiting at a light-rail platform in St. Paul, authorities say.
Surveillance footage shows the 25-year-old pull the cane from his pants before gripping it with both hands and swinging it “as it he was hitting a baseball” at the woman’s head, according to charges filed Tuesday in Ramsey County District Court.
After striking her in the head, Yusuf wound up and took a second “violent swing” at her, the criminal complaint said.
The woman told police that the attack, which took place on Aug. 7, came out of nowhere as she was “minding her own business” at the Green Line rail platform.
Just beforehand, she said she observed “commotion” near the intersection of Snelling and University avenues and saw males jumping on cars as they passed through the intersection.
Then she said the two males walked into a CVS drugstore.
Neither she nor another woman who witnessed the incident could identify Yusuf as the assailant, but officers who watched the video footage of it said it depicted Yusuf as the attacker, the complaint said.
The Ramsey County attorney’s office charged him via warrant with two counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon.
The charge comes days after the Hennepin County attorney’s office charged the Minneapolis man with second-degree murder in a separate incident.
In that case on Aug. 12, Yusuf and three other males were hanging out near West River Parkway near Third Avenue in downtown Minneapolis when Yusuf “became aggressive” and started stabbing one of them.
Police stumbled across the bleeding victim as they were canvassing the area looking for a suspect in another case, charges say.
The victim was pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy determined that he was stabbed 14 times, including seven times in the chest, three in the back and once in the neck.
Neither the victim’s name nor age were provided in the Hennepin County criminal complaint, though authorities previously identified him as 21-year-old Burka Osman Mohammed of Minneapolis.
Police used still photos pulled from surveillance cameras in the area to track down two of the males who were with the victim that night.
Both told police that Yusuf started stabbing the man during an argument, the criminal complaint said in that case. They said Yusuf warned both of them to keep their mouths shut about what had happened afterward.
Yusuf is being held in Hennepin County as his case is pending there.
He has yet to enter a plea and his attorney, Bryan Leary, could not be immediately reached for comment.
No court date has been set for his Ramsey County case yet.