In Flint stabbing, suspect’s life probed

DETROIT — The Canadian man charged with stabbing a police officer at the Flint airport in a possible act of terrorism was a part-time caretaker at the Montreal apartment building where he lived and had once studied to sell insurance, a landlord and an insurance company spokesman said Thursday.

Amor Ftouhi kept the building stairwells clean and always paid his rent on time, his landlord told The Associated Press. The 49-year-old originally from Tunisia lived in a two-bedroom apartment with his wife and children and “never made any trouble,” Luciano Piazza said.

Investigators are working to learn more about Ftouhi, whom they describe as a lonewolf attacker who made his way to the seemingly random destination of Flint, a struggling Michigan city once known for its sprawling General Motors factories but now better known for lead-tainted water.

Once in the United States, he unsuccessfully tried to buy a gun but managed to buy a knife, David Gelios, head of the FBI in Detroit said Thursday. He did not elaborate.

Licensed gun dealers first must put purchasers through an electronic background check of U.S. law enforcement databases, which could make Canadians ineligible, said Brady Schickinger, director of the Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners.

The attack Wednesday at Bishop International Airport, about 50 miles northwest of Detroit, was being investigated as an act of terrorism, but authorities said they have no indication that the suspect was involved in a “wider plot,” Gelios said.

Ftouhi, a dual citizen of Canada and Tunisia, stabbed airport police Lt. Jeff Neville with a large knife after yelling “Allahu akbar,” the Arabic phrase for “God is great.” According to the FBI, Ftouhi said something similar to “you have killed people in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are all going to die.”