Gun­man Who Shot Jew­ish Man Walk­ing To Syn­a­gogue Is Report­ed­ly An Ille­gal Alien

The gun­man who alleged­ly shot a Jew­ish man walk­ing to a Chica­go syn­a­gogue on Sat­ur­day is an ille­gal immi­grant who was caught and released into the coun­try ear­li­er this year, accord­ing to Fox News’s Bill Mel­u­g­in

The sus­pect, who police iden­ti­fied as 22-year-old Sidi Mohamed Abdal­lahi, is report­ed­ly a Mau­ri­tan­ian nation­al who was appre­hend­ed in Bor­der Patrol’s San Diego sec­tor in March 2023 before being released.

More than 15,000 peo­ple from Mau­ri­ta­nia, a pre­dom­i­nant­ly Mus­lim coun­try in north­west Africa, entered the Unit­ed States last year, with many rely­ing on routes shared through social media net­works, accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post.


Abdal­lahi alleged­ly shot a 39-year-old man at 9:25 a.m. in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neigh­bor­hood, then returned less than 30 min­utes lat­er and opened fire on police, para­medics, and bystanders. He was caught on a neighbor’s secu­ri­ty cam­era scream­ing “Allahu Akbar” dur­ing the sec­ond attack. 

Police returned fire, injur­ing Abdal­lahi, before tak­ing him to the hos­pi­tal. 

In a video shared with The Dai­ly Wire, police are seen engag­ing in a shootout with Abdal­lahi on a side­walk. In anoth­er video, neigh­bors’ reac­tions are doc­u­ment­ed as they dis­cov­er the injured shoot­er out­side their home’s win­dow.


The Jew­ish Unit­ed Fund said police and local politi­cians con­firmed the gun­man yelled “Allahu Akbar” in a meet­ing after the inci­dent.

Abdal­lahi was charged with 14 felony counts, includ­ing six counts of attempt­ed mur­der in the first degree, sev­en counts of aggra­vat­ed dis­charge of a firearm, and one count of aggra­vat­ed battery/discharge of a firearm.

Com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers and neigh­bors have said they are frus­trat­ed Abdal­lahi was not charged with a hate crime.

“Notably, and despite evi­dence that seems to sug­gest an anti­se­mit­ic motive for the shoot­ing, author­i­ties did not file hate crime charges,” 50th Ward Alder­man Debra Sil­ver­stein said in a state­ment. “I am very dis­ap­point­ed by this turn of events and strong­ly encour­age the Cook Coun­ty State’s Attor­ney Office to pros­e­cute the offend­er to the full extent of the law.”

Sil­ver­stein added that she has spo­ken to police who “share our dis­gust at a Jew­ish man being the vic­tim of vio­lence over the Jew­ish hol­i­days.”

Chica­go May­or Bran­don John­son has drawn crit­i­cism from res­i­dents after con­demn­ing the shoot­ing with­out men­tion­ing that the vic­tim was Jew­ish, or whether that may have moti­vat­ed the attack­er. 


John­son vot­ed in favor of an anti-Israel res­o­lu­tion ear­li­er this year that demand­ed a cease­fire in the Israel-Hamas war with­out men­tion­ing Hamas. He was mocked by crit­ics who said he should be call­ing for a cease­fire in Chica­go.

A con­gres­sion­al report released in August revealed that under the Biden-Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion, bor­der patrol has encoun­tered more than 250 ille­gal immi­grants on the ter­ror watch list, 99 of whom were released into the Unit­ed States.

A spokes­woman for the U.S. Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment (ICE) said the agency has “had no inter­ac­tion” with Abdal­lahi “at this time.”