Eyewitnesses share chilling, up-close details of Fargo police shooting

Jul. 19—FARGO — Last Friday around 2:45 p.m., Vicki Brasel spotted a car crash on 25th Street South outside her office window.

She saw police and medics moving about, then turned back to her computer.

But when popping sounds began about 20 minutes later, the receptionist at Beltone Hearing Aid Center looked out again to a frightening sight.

"There was a man standing right there in the parking lot with a machine gun straight up in the air, and I ran away," Brasel said.

Sajid Ghauri, president and CEO of Network and Technology Solutions, a neighboring business in the office complex, also heard the sounds and assumed someone was driving on a blown-out tire.

"I never even heard gunshots before," he said.

After hearing more pops, he walked outside to see people ducking behind a parked vehicle and rushed back to warn his dozen employees to gather in a central location and to "get low."

Brasel and Ghauri might have had some of the earliest glimpses of the gunman who killed 23-year-old Fargo Police Officer Jake Wallin, injured Officers Tyler Hawes, 22, and Andrew Dotas, 28, and wounded bystander Karlee Koswick, a Boston woman who recently moved to Fargo.

The gunman, 37-year-old Mohamad Barakat of Fargo, fired rapidly on the officers who had responded to the routine traffic crash on Friday, July 14.

Barakat was fatally shot by Officer Zachary Robinson, 31, ending the threat of harm to others.

Both Brasel and Ghauri described Barakat as being white or light skinned and bald or nearly bald. "He could have been ethnic, but his skin was light," Brasel said.

Before she ran off to hide in the back of the business, she saw other details of the gunman, who authorities say drove to the scene but was not involved in the crash.

"He was standing on the passenger side of the car. I believe the door was open. Maybe he was crouching or ... he could have been getting out of the passenger side, but I don't know," Brasel said.

She's certain the shooter pulled into the lot sometime after the vehicle accident.

His car was not there when she first looked out, she said, because she pays close attention to the lot and the spaces where her customers usually park.

After things seemed to calm down, Brasel returned to the window and saw the shooter's body.

"He was down and they were cuffing him, and then I just looked away because I don't want to see dead people," she said.

Ghauri also saw the gunman's body, lying face down on the asphalt pavement.

As the owner and landlord of the business complex, Ghauri went to check on his tenants, and at one point was confronted by an officer asking his identity.

Ghauri, originally from Pakistan, believes officers feared the gunman might have had accomplices.

Once he explained the situation, police allowed him to continue checking on his tenants, including Brasel, who was crying and horrified, he said.

Brasel was the lone employee in her business at the time, with others having left around noon, while Ghauri's full staff was on hand that day.

Three other tenants in the complex, a communications business, a chiropractor and in-home health care business, had either closed early for summer hours or were otherwise not present, he said.

Ghauri also helped four women and one man who were in the car that was rear-ended, and unwittingly caught in the middle of the violence, inviting them into his office to use restrooms and get water.

There were no video surveillance cameras outside the office building, something Ghauri is now looking to purchase.

While he's doing better now, Ghauri said he couldn't sleep for several nights after the shooting. "The images haunt me," he said.

Brasel said many people have checked in on her in the days since.

"I think they expect me to be more traumatized. But when you know the Lord and know he's with you ... bad things don't seem as bad," she said.

Ghauri was telling two of his recently-hired employees, one from Greece and one from Washington state, that Fargo is a very safe place.

"I was telling them this is the most peaceful area you're going to ever run into. People come here to raise their kids because it's so nice and peaceful. And then this happened," Ghauri said.

Forum reporter C.S. Hagen contributed to this report.