‘Fire starter’: Tnuza Jamal Hassan, from Minneapolis, has been charged with arson for allegedly starting four fires at St Catherine’s University, where she at one time was a student
A former college student from Minneapolis has been charged with intentionally setting four fires at St. Catherine’s University in St. Paul to avenge Muslims killed in US bombings in the Middle East.
A criminal complaint alleges 19-year-old Tnuza Jamal Hassan confessed to investigators she started the fires on Wednesday because she had been reading about the US military destroying schools in Iraq or Afghanistan and felt she should do the same thing. Hassan is charged with first-degree arson.
‘Hassan said this was the same thing that happened in the “Muslim land” and nobody cares if they get hurt, so why not do this?’ the complaint stated.
The complaint, cited by Minneapolis Star Tribune, says Hassan told police her intent was to hurt people and to burn the Catholic university to the ground.
The teenager was also quoted as telling police and arson investigators: ‘You guys are lucky that I don’t know how to build a bomb because I would have done that.’
On Friday, Hassan appeared in Ramsey County District Court and was charged with a single count of first-degree arson, reported Pioneer Press. She was then remanded back to the county jail.
Officials say a sprinkler system prevented a dormitory fire from spreading to a day care center where 33 children and eight adults were present.
Close call: A sprinkler system prevented one of the four fires at a dormitory from spreading to a day care center where 33 children and eight adults were present
The university said in a press release on Thursday that the fires were ‘small and quickly contained, and no one was injured. There was damage to furnishings, but no structural damage to the impacted buildings.’
Police obtained surveillance video from the university, which allowed them to track Hassan to Crandall Hall where she was ultimately taken into custody in a student lounge after a room-to-room search.
According to the college, the 19-year-old was last enrolled at St Catherine’s in the fall of 2017.
Hassan reportedly dropped out because her family were planning to travel to Ethiopia.
Officials said between 11.40pm and 2pm, Hassan torched a chair at St Mary’s residence hall and burned a few smaller items, including books, toilet paper and sanitary napkins in women’s bathrooms on campus.
Following her arrest, Hassan allegedly told police that she had written a letter to her roommates containing ‘radical ideas about supporting Muslims and bringing back the caliphate,’ the complaint said.
The letter frightened the roommates, who handed it over to campus security.