The attacker, Somali refugee Abdul Razak Ali Artan, was shot and killed by the first responding OSU police officer, and 13 people were hospitalized for injuries.

There had been high concerns from federal law enforcement officials about car ramming and stabbing attacks being encouraged by online extremist propaganda due to the relative ease of committing them compared to bombings.

[4] In the weeks prior to the incident, ISIL had been urging its followers to copy a car ramming attack in Nice, France, that killed 86 people.

[5] Earlier that year in February, a man attacked patrons at the Nazareth Restaurant in Columbus, wounding four before being shot and killed by responding police officers.

[6][7][8] There had also been a number of recently foiled ISIL-inspired terror plots or intents to travel to the Middle East to fight for ISIL, in which the perpetrators all originated from Ohio.

[9] In the week prior to the attack, the perpetrator, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, traveled to Washington, D.C., and purchased a knife at a Home Depot there.

[10] According to the chairman of the OSU Department of Materials Science and Engineering headquartered at Watts Hall, students told him that someone called in a fluorine leak in the building, which has lab facilities.

At 9:52 a.m.,[1] the attacker drove a Honda Civic into the courtyard, deliberately striking several pedestrians, including emeritus professor William Clark,[11][12] before crashing into a brick wall.

[13][14][15][16][excessive citations] As people rushed in to help the injured,[17] the assailant got out of the car, armed with a butcher knife, "let out a war cry" according to one witness, and began attacking students.

[16] At one point, Anderson Payne, a U.S. Army veteran who was helping people struck by the vehicle, grabbed the attacker's knife and ducked under his arm in order to escape, but was unable to disarm him and had his hand slashed in the process.

In addition, a Columbus Division of Fire bomb squad was dispatched to the scene and arrived at 10:06 a.m.[21][35][36] The FBI's Cincinnati office announced that its agents were assisting campus police in the investigation.

[14] Abdul Razak Ali Artan (1998 – November 28, 2016) was a Muslim Somali refugee and legal permanent resident of the United States who had been a logistics management major in the Max M. Fisher College of Business at the time of the attack.

[6] However, a senior U.S. government official said that Artan left Somalia with the rest of his family in 2007, and that they spent seven years in a refugee camp in Pakistan, settling in Islamabad on a road known as "Somali Street".

[2][4][43] The Franklin County Coroner's Office, conducting a preliminary autopsy report on Artan's body, determined that he died from gunshot wounds to the head and chest.

[7] Artan previously attended Columbus State Community College from the fall of 2014 to the summer of 2016, and graduated cum laude with an Associate of Arts degree,[49] after which he transferred to OSU.

Artan added that he was scared about other people's opinions of him because of what he perceived to be negative portrayal of Muslims in the media, and criticized the then Presidential candidate Donald Trump for not being "educated on Islam".

[68] On June 1, 2017, investigators announced that Artan left a torn-up note to his parents in which he pledged his allegiance to ISIL, asked his family to stop being moderate, and said he was upset by the persecution of Muslims in Myanmar.

[73] In a press conference held sometime after, OSU President Michael V. Drake said that he met with Alan Horujko and thanked him for "following his training and being able to neutralize the circumstance within roughly one minute".

[74] When asked if the attack had anything to do with terrorism or Ohio's Somali-American community, Drake cautioned against "jumping to conclusions", citing a lack of evidence at the time.

[76] On December 1, Stephanie Clemons Thompson, assistant director of student life at OSU, made a Facebook post calling for compassion to be directed at Artan and hashtagging #BuckeyeStrong #BlackLivesMatter #SayHisName.

The post received condemnation on social media for defending a person who attempted to kill others, for implying that Artan's death was wrong, and for comparing a terrorist who targeted his fellow students with victims of police brutality.

[79] Mayor Andrew Ginther said that he met with several of the injured, and also declared the city's solidarity with OSU and praised the actions of Alan Horujko and other law enforcement officers.

[48] Imad Hamad, executive director of the American Human Rights Council, released a statement denouncing the assault and cautioned against scapegoating the wider Muslim community.

[85][86] Following the OSU attack and a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in which at least one victim bled to death, a new federal initiative was launched.

Doctors have emphasized the importance for school faculty members to stay calm and assess injuries, but also discouraged the use of more invasive emergency procedures such as removing a bullet.