A former Army National Guard member who had spent eight years in prison for attempting to aid the Islamic State opened fire on a classroom at Virginia’s Old Dominion University on Thursday before ROTC students subdued and killed him, authorities said.
He had yelled “Allahu Akbar” before the shooting, which left one person dead and two wounded, according to the FBI.
Dominique Evans, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Norfolk field office, said at a news conference that the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps students showed “extreme bravery and courage” and prevented further loss of life by stopping the gunman, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh.
The students subdued him and “rendered him no longer alive,” Evans said. “I don’t know how else to say it.” She confirmed Jalloh wasn’t shot but didn’t provide further details.
The campus shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism, FBI Director Kash Patel said on social media.
Background on the gunman
Evans said Jalloh aspired to conduct a terrorist attack like the 2009 killings at Fort Hood.
Jalloh had pleaded guilty in 2016 to attempting to aid the Islamic State and was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
He was on supervised release, which is comparable to probation, when he carried out the attack on Thursday. It wasn’t immediately clear why his release from prison had been moved up. Inmates can get time off of their sentences for a variety of reasons, but it isn’t known if that happened in this case.
Ashraf Nubani, a Virginia attorney who represented Jalloh in his 2016 criminal case, said in a statement that he’d had no recent contact with Jalloh and had no information about Thursday’s events. “Any loss of life is tragic, and violence against innocent people is completely contrary to Islamic teachings and basic human morality,” Nubani added.
Jalloh’s sister, Fatmatu Jalloh of Sterling, Virginia, said Thursday she knew nothing about the attack. She said she last saw her brother two days earlier.
“I have no idea what is going on,” she said. “I know nothing. I don’t even know who to call.”
Shooter confirmed dead within 10 minutes of call
Old Dominion University Police Chief Garrett Shelton said less than 10 minutes passed between when officers were called about a shooting in the university’s business school building and when responders determined the shooter was dead.
Shelton said authorities hadn’t yet fully determined the shooter’s cause of death. He did not confirm whether any officers fired a weapon.
Lt. Col. Jimmy Delongchamp, public information officer for the U.S. Army Cadet Command at Fort Knox, Kentucky, told The Associated Press that two of the people who were shot were part of the Army ROTC at ODU.
ROTC is a program where students receive a scholarship to attend college while training to become commissioned officers in the U.S. military. They are committed to serve as an officer for a period of time after they graduate.
Voorhees University in South Carolina confirmed the victim who died was Lt. Col. Brandon Shah, the son-in-law of a Voorhees trustee.
Shah attended ODU as an ROTC student, according to his biography on the university’s website, and had returned in 2022 as a leader for the program. In the Army, Shah had flown helicopters over Iraq, Afghanistan and Eastern Europe as a pilot.
Shooter’s Guard service and Islamic State ties
Jalloh is a naturalized U.S. citizen from Sierra Leone.
The Virginia Army National Guard confirmed he served as a specialist from 2009 until 2015, when he was honorably discharged.
According to a 2016 FBI affidavit filed in his criminal case, Jalloh told a government informant he quit the National Guard after hearing lectures from radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.
A court affidavit recounts a three-month sting operation in which Jalloh, then 26, said he was thinking about carrying out an attack similar to the 2009 shootings at Fort Hood, which left 13 people dead. Authorities launched the 2016 operation after Jalloh made contact with Islamic State members in Africa earlier that year.
Jalloh later told the informant that the Islamic State group had asked if he wanted to participate in an attack. He tried to donate $500 to the Islamic State, but the money actually went to an account controlled by the FBI, according to court documents.
Jalloh then tried to buy an AR-15 assault rifle from a Virginia gun store but was turned away because he lacked the proper paperwork. He returned the next day and bought a different assault rifle that was rendered inoperable before he left the store, prosecutors said. He was arrested the following day.
The Justice Department in 2017 requested a 20-year prison sentence for Jalloh, noting that he had attempted to acquire a gun to carry out a murder plot in the United States. Jalloh’s lawyers requested a 6½-year prison sentence and placement in a facility with residential drug abuse treatment.
“By putting the idea of this murder plot into religious terms, and by suggesting that murdering members of the US military would be a path to heaven, the defendant showed how strongly committed he was to the deadly ideology of the Islamic State,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, sentenced him instead to 11 years in prison with credit for time served and five years of supervised release. He also ordered Jalloh to participate in programs for substance abuse and mental health treatment. Based on his release date, he would have been under supervised release until 2029.
Inmates convicted of terrorism-related offenses are not eligible to reduce their sentences for good behavior or participation in a residential drug abuse treatment program.
In a letter to O’Grady prior to his sentencing, Jalloh wrote that he started using drugs after his girlfriend ended their six-year relationship.
“I feel deep regret in having been driven by my emotions rather than my intellect and becoming involved with such an evil organization,” he said. “I reject and deplore terrorism and any groups associated with it, especially ISIL.”
People wounded in the shooting
One of the people who was hospitalized after the shooting is in critical condition Thursday, according to Sentara Health. The other had been treated and released.
The public university in Norfolk canceled classes and suspended operations on its main campus through Friday.
In a message to the university community, ODU President Brian Hemphill expressed gratitude for the swift emergency response and extended his thoughts and prayers to those impacted.
The school in coastal Norfolk has about 24,000 students and says nearly 30% of its students are military-affiliated. The area is also home to Naval Station Norfolk, the largest naval station in the world.
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This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Fatmatu Jalloh’s surname.
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Associated Press journalists Michael R. Sisak in New York City, Allen G. Breed in Wake Forest, North Carolina, Alanna Durkin Richer and Eric Tucker in Washington, D.C., Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee, and Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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