Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, said a gunman opened fire in a business school classroom on Thursday before Reserve Officers’ Training Corps students subdued him, authorities said.
The FBI said the attack left one person dead and two others wounded.
At a news conference, FBI special agent Dominique Evans described the response by the ROTC students. Evans said they showed “extreme bravery and courage” and prevented further loss of life by stopping the gunman, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh. She added that the students subdued him and “rendered him no longer alive,” and said, “I don’t know how else to say it.” Evans confirmed that Jalloh wasn’t shot.
FBI Director Kash Patel said on social media that the campus shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism.
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 had not yet fully determined the shooter’s cause of death and did not confirm whether any officers fired a weapon.
A public information officer for the U.S. Army Cadet Command, Lt. Col. Jimmy Delongchamp, told The Associated Press that two of the people who were shot were part of the Army ROTC at ODU. Voorhees University confirmed that the victim who died was Lt. Col. Brandon Shah, and said Shah was the son-in-law of a Voorhees trustee. ODU’s website biography, according to the report, said Shah attended ODU as an ROTC student and returned in 2022 as a leader for the program. The report also said Shah flew helicopters over Iraq, Afghanistan and Eastern Europe as a pilot.
The FBI said Jalloh had yelled “Allahu Akbar” before the shooting. Evans also said Jalloh aspired to carry out an attack like the 2009 killings at Fort Hood. She said Jalloh pleaded guilty in 2016 to attempting to aid the Islamic State and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Evans said Jalloh was on supervised release, comparable to probation, when he carried out the Thursday attack.
The report said Ashraf Nubani, a Virginia attorney who represented Jalloh in the 2016 criminal case, said he had no recent contact with Jalloh and no information about Thursday’s events. Nubani said, “Any loss of life is tragic, and violence against innocent people is completely contrary to Islamic teachings and basic human morality.” The report also said Jalloh’s sister, Fatmatu Jalloh of Sterling, Virginia, told reporters she knew nothing about the attack and had last seen her brother two days earlier.
Sentara Health said one hospitalized victim was in critical condition and the other had been treated and released. ODU 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 Virginia Army National Guard confirmed that Jalloh served as a specialist from 2009 until 2015, when he was honorably discharged. The report said an FBI affidavit in Jalloh’s 2016 case stated that he told a government informant he quit the National Guard after hearing lectures from radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Court documents cited in the report described a sting in which Jalloh tried to donate $500 to the Islamic State, but the money went to an account controlled by the FBI. They also said he tried to buy an AR-15 but was turned away for lacking proper paperwork, then bought a different assault rifle the next day that was rendered inoperable before he left the store.
The report said a U.S. District Judge, Liam O’Grady, sentenced Jalloh to 11 years in prison with credit for time served and five years of supervised release. It also said the story was updated to correct the spelling of Fatmatu Jalloh’s surname.