A student who reportedly drove his car into a crowd of people on a US university campus and then stabbed them with a butcher knife is being investigated over a Facebook rant apparently posted shortly before the attack.

Somali-born Abdul Razak Ali Artan, who was a legal permanent US resident, was shot dead by a police officer outside an engineering building at Ohio State University in Columbus on Monday.

Eleven people were injured - one critically - after he allegedly drove his small Honda over a kerb and then began stabbing people.

Image: Abdul Razak Ali Artan was shot dead by police. Pic: The Lantern

Authorities said they were investigating whether it was a terrorist attack, amid claims the student may have been "self-radicalised".

US Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the attack "bears all of the hallmarks of a terror attack carried out by someone who may have been self-radicalised".


A post on what appears to be Artan's Facebook page claimed he had reached "boiling point", and made a reference to "lone wolf attacks" as well as citing radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki. It was unclear if the post was genuinely from Artan.

Image: Students were told there was an 'active shooter'

Ohio State's student newspaper, The Lantern, ran an interview with Artan in August in which he said he was a third-year logistics management student who had transferred from Columbus State.

He said he was a Muslim and was looking for a place to pray openly, but worried about the reaction he would get on campus.

He told the newspaper: "I was kind of scared with everything going on in the media. I'm a Muslim, it's not what media portrays me to be.

"If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don't know what they're going to think, what's going to happen. But I don't blame them. It's the media that put that picture in their heads."

Buckeye Alert: Active Shooter on campus. Run Hide Fight. Watts Hall. 19th and College. — OSU Emergency Mngmnt (@OSU_EMFP) November 28, 2016

The university alerted students after the attack began at around 10am, sending a series of tweets warning there was an "active shooter" and students should "Run Hide Fight".

That was triggered by what turned out to be police gunfire.

Police descended on the 60,000-student campus and authorities blocked off roads. Students barricaded themselves inside offices and classrooms, piling chairs and desks in front of doors before the all-clear was given an hour and a half later.

Image: Police rushed to the scene at Ohio State University in Columbus

Artan was not known to the FBI prior to the attack on Monday. Surveillance footage showed in the car by himself before the attack, but investigators are looking into whether anyone else was involved.

The officer who fatally shot him, identified as Alan Horujko, was praised by the Department of Public Safety.