Police emphasize store manager's help amid backlash fears

Mount Morris police are going to great pains to stress that Abdulla Farah, manager of the convenience store where the serial stabbing suspect worked for about a month, was "extremely cooperative" in helping them.

Farah left this afternoon with a police escort after about 100 people gathered at the store, some of them yelling threats at him, The Flint Journal reports.

"He's not a suspect here," said Mount Morris Township Police Chief Scott McKenna said. "He didn't do anything wrong."

Arab-American residents of the Flint area told the Journal they feared a backlash against people who looked Middle Eastern or Arab after the suspect was identified as Elias Abuelazam, 33, a legal U.S. resident from the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Ramle, Israel.

"It's a little bit concerning," Farhad Bol, 49, told the newspaper. "The general population in America is very understanding, but there are a few who are not."

Bol said he is Persian, not Arab, but "people don't differentiate — Arab, Persian, Muslim. It's all the same to them."