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On Friday, July 14, Fargo police confirmed that 23-year-old officer Jake Wallin died in a gunfight. According to CBS, Wallin was among multiple officers who engaged in a firefight with 37-year-old Mohamad Barakat, a Fargo resident who allegedly fired his gun at the police for undisclosed reasons. The gunfight led to the death of both Wallin and Barakat. Two other officers and a 25-year-old female civilian also sustained injuries.
The gunfight that led to the deaths of Jake Wallin and Mohamad Barakat remains under investigation. In the wake of the tragedy, several law enforcement agencies addressed the young officer's death.
Jake Wallin had only become a Fargo police officer three months before his death
As per Kare 11, Jake Wallin was a St. Michael native who recently joined the Fargo Police Department. Before his brief law enforcement career, Wallin entered military service through the Minnesota National Guard in December 2017.
From November 1, 2020, to July 19, 2021, he was deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq as a cannon crewman with the 1-194 Field Artillery Battalion. At the time of his death, he juggled his career as a law enforcement official with his role in the 151 Field Artillery Battalion. Many agencies described how much his sacrifice meant to the police community.
At the time of the gunfight, he was in the field as an officer in training. In a video released by the Fargo police department, Wallin described his passion for a career in law enforcement.
"Throughout my entire life, I've always wanted to work in some sort of position that had purpose behind my job and a police officer is always what kind of came to me," he said in the video.
“I don’t want to be sitting in an office wondering why I’m here every day. I want to be out, I want to be doing something that I can tell myself at the end of the day I made a difference somehow," he added.
His father, Jeff Wallin, said that Jake's explanation behind his choice to join law enforcement summed him up perfectly as an individual.
"I don't know what to say that he didn't say perfectly himself in that video... That is exactly who he was," Jeff Wallin told reporters.
Jake Wallin was among four officers directly involved in the firefight. The injured officers were Andrew Dotas and Tyler Hawes. A fourth officer, Zach Robinson, reportedly took down Mohammad Barakat.
According to KCRA, since the shooting is in the early stages of the investigation, authorities have not released specific details. However, witnesses at the scene claimed that Barakat appeared to ambush the officers while they were probing an unrelated traffic incident.
