For nearly a week, police in Menomonie, Wis., have been at a loss to identify a suspect or a motive in the fatal beating of a Saudi Arabian college student outside a pizza restaurant. Now, the city is trying to change that by raising money for a reward. The tally so far? $20,000.

The student, Hussain Saeed Alnahdi, 24, who had been enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in 2015 and studied English and then business administration, was attacked around 2 a.m. Sunday on Main Street East, a stretch of road between the campus and the edge of Lake Menomin, the Menomonie Police Department said.

He was taken to the hospital in Eau Claire, where he died Monday, police said.

After his death, the Police Department said it did not believe there was an “ongoing threat” to the community, though it said it had no information about a possible motive. By Thursday, that apparently had not changed.

However, a department commander, Todd W. Swartz, said in an email that witnesses had described a possible suspect: a 6-foot-tall white man.

In the absence of information about whether there had been a racial motive, the death of Alnahdi has shaken the small city in the western part of the state and has shocked the university campus, where the 9,600 students include a tight-knit group of 142 from Saudi Arabia.

“There is more fear, especially because we don’t know who the assailant is,” Michael Lee, an international student adviser, said in a telephone interview on Thursday from the campus. “It was an extremely rare, almost-unheard-of event.”

Lee said that the number of Saudi students had grown in the past four years, attracted to the university’s engineering and business curriculum. The Saudi kingdom sponsors about 80,000 to 100,000 students in the United States as a way to diversify its economy and future workforce, he said.

But that could change as a drop in oil prices hits state coffers, and if the sponsorship program evolves under King Salman, who ascended to the throne in January 2015.

Arab News, a Saudi newspaper, reported that the university had extended condolences to Alnahdi’s family in Buraida, north of Riyadh.

The university chancellor, Bob Meyer, and the Menomonie police chief, Eric Atkinson, held a news conference Wednesday to announce a $15,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a suspect. The money was raised through private donations and a foundation affiliated with the university, they said.

“Many people are looking for ways to help the police find the assailant, and we hope this fund will generate the information needed to lead to an arrest and conviction,” Meyer said.

The Council of American-Islamic Relations, a national civil rights organization, said it would add $5,000 to the fund, and sent its Minnesota chapter executive director, Jaylani Hussein, to meet with students and staff members at the university on Wednesday. Related Articles Tony Evers extends Wisconsin’s mask mandate until Nov. 21

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Statistics show that in 2014 Menomonie had a violent crime rate that was below the national average. But anxious parents in Saudi Arabia have warned their children studying at the university to be careful, and to leave home only for classes, a Saudi student, Omar Alkohmos, said at a news conference Wednesday, The Journal Sentinel reported.

“They are all afraid,” Alkohmos said in a phone interview on Thursday. “A lot of international students are asking for more police officers to be more in downtown every weekend, and just to increase security for a while for us to feel safe.”

The cover photograph for the university’s Facebook page showed a downtown memorial to Alnahdi outside Toppers Pizza, with candles, flowers and notes. One written in Arabic offered condolences.

“This is NOT who we are!” another note read.

And a third from his teachers: “Rest in peace. We will always remember you.”

Alnahdi’s case spurred at least one observer on the university’s Facebook page to note a racist undercurrent in the city, tracing it back to beatings, at least one of them fatal, of African students in the 1980s.

“Good luck,” a Facebook reader, Bill Miller, wrote after the reward was announced. “There are also certainly people still in town who knew enough to convict the man/men who murdered Sani Tela in 1985,” the reader wrote, referring to a Nigerian student who was beaten and run over. “That was a disgraceful moment for this city, and I fear there may be a similar outcome this time.”

Margee Stienecker, Alnahdi’s English-language tutor for more than a year, said she remembered the city’s reaction after the events in the 1980s. “There was quite an outcry,” she said in an interview. “That didn’t represent the community, either.”

The university said it was offering counseling to anyone who wanted it. A memorial service for Alnahdi was planned for late Thursday afternoon.

Meyer, in a blog post titled “We Grieve for Hussain,” said it was a “painful time” for everyone on campus.

“It is a normal reaction in a time like this to look for reasons for this tragedy,” he wrote. “I certainly have many questions and concerns that I wish we had answers to about what led to Hussain’s assault. But I, along with everyone else who grieves for Hussain, have to wait for the outcome of the Menomonie Police Department investigation into this horrific incident.

“It is vitally important that no one jumps to any conclusions about what may have precipitated this attack before the facts are known.”

— Christine Hauser