17-year-old girl is being praised for her “remarkable” actions after surveillance video showed her opening her mosque and ushering in students running from an alleged stabbing at their Wisconsin high school.
The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s Oshkosh chapter mosque is across the street from Oshkosh West High School, where police said a 16-year-old student stabbed an officer with an “edged weapon” before being shot by the officer.
Surveillance video from the mosque shows the moment one of its members, Duaa Ahmad, a high school student at Oshkosh West, jumped into action and entered the security code — opening the mosque for her peers to safely shelter
“I just felt like I did what had to be done,” Ahmad told ABC News in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
Ahmad quickly entered the code to the house of worship, which she attends with her family. The video shows her waving students inside.
“Everybody was terrified,” Ahmad told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “People were crying and trying to comfort everybody. It was just so hectic. We were so confused why we had to run, why we had to evacuate, what was going on.”
Then she called her dad, Saad Ahmad, to let him know she’d opened the mosque, according to the report. He rushed over from work — and the mosque was soon providing coffee and water to a crowd of students seeking shelter.
“That first hour was very stressful because we had no idea how bad the situation really was, or was not,” Saad Ahmad told the paper. “I was quite impressed with [my daughter’s] composure throughout all this.”
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Her uncle, Khurram Ahmad, told ABC that his niece’s actions brought about an “uplifting” moment in the midst of the tumult.
“At first you see it, and you don’t consider the subtlety in it that she remained outside,” he told the network. “These are things that cannot be taught.”
Ahmad remained humble as thousands shared the video on Twitter, commending her bravery.
“Thank you all for the positive comments,” she wrote Wednesday. “I just did what’s right and the most important thing is that everyone is safe.”
“I do really feel like all I did was enter a code,” she told the Journal-Sentinel. “I’m so lucky to have been able to help.”
Just a day earlier and about 90 minutes away, a resource officer at Waukesha South High School reportedly shot an armed 17-year-old student who refused orders to drop his gun and pointed it at responding cops.
The unidentified suspect sustained “relatively minor wounds,” according to a fire commander at the scene.
