Crime & Safety

(UPDATED) Hudson Shooting Defendant's Name Matches 2010 Baseball Bat Attacker's

Ahmed Farah Hirsi was convicted in a May 2010 baseball-bat assault at a downtown St. Paul SuperAmerica. On Tuesday, prosecutors charged a man with the same name and birthdate.

Update (1:45 p.m. Tuesday): The matching names and birthdates of a man charged in Sunday's shooting in Hudson and a man convicted in a 2010 baseball-bat assault in St. Paul may or may not indicate they are the same person.

Complicating the question of whether they are the same Ahmed Farah Hirsi is the shared birthdate: Jan. 1, 1988. According to Kathy Klos, staff attorney at the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, many people who come from countries where it isn't common practice to register births are assigned the birthdate January 1 in the process of immigration to the United States.

Hudson police and the St. Croix County District Attorney's Office weren't immediately available to confirm that the man charged in the Hudson shooting is the same man convicted in the St. Paul beating.

Original post (12:42 p.m. Tuesday):
One of the men charged Tuesday in a downtown Hudson shooting that left three injured appears to have been one of four convicted attackers in a 2010 baseball-bat assault in downtown St. Paul.

Ahmed Farah Hirsi was sentenced in December 2010 to 3-1/2 years in prison, the fourth man sentenced in a May 2010 assault at a SuperAmerica station store.

The Ahmed Farah Hirsi charged Tuesday morning in the Hudson shooting shares a birthdate with the man by the same name convicted in 2010 of a crime that was widely viewed on video from the store's security camera.
Hirsi, 26, and Guled Bile Abdi, 22, both of Minneapolis, are being held without bail in Hennepin County Jail pending extradition to St. Croix County, WI.

Two of the Hudson shooting victims, both men, were treated and released from Regions Hospital. A third, Fartun Ibrahim Aidid, was shot in the abdomen; hospital spokesperson said Tuesday she remains in critical condition.

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