5 MINUTES OF CHAOS
Shooting details released
Three to five minutes was all it took 24- year- old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez to punch through a gate with his rented car and blast his way into a U. S. military reserve centre, killing four Marines and mortally wounding a sailor.
Officials on Wednesday released new details of last week’s brazen assault in Chattanooga, Tenn., describing a chaotic scene of mostly unarmed Marines scrambling to escape the man who approached with an assault rifle, a handgun and a vest full of extra ammunition. Five didn’t make it.
One service member inside the building saw Abdulazeez approaching and fired at him, likely with a personal weapon. Abdulazeez shot back, entered the building and fatally wounded an officer. At the same time, Marines ran from room- to- room, trying to get their fellow service members to safety.
Meanwhile, Chattanooga police were just behind Abdulazeez, having been called a few minutes earlier when he opened fire on another military facility about 11 kilometres away before driving off, leaving the windows pockmarked with bullet holes.
As Abdulazeez made his way through the reserve centre he “continued to shoot those he encountered,” Ed Reinhold, an FBI special agent, said at a news conference. Then he walked out the back door into a gated motor pool area where troops were scrambling over a fence to safety. At least two Marines tried to “provide cover” for the others, Reinhold said. Abdulazeez shot and killed four Marines.
The whole thing ended just a few minutes after it began, as police caught up to Abdulazeez, shooting and killing him, but not before he managed to wound one of them.
A total of 20 Marines and two Navy corpsmen were at the centre that day, checking their equipment after a training mission in California.
Military personnel are generally prohibited from carrying firearms at military recruitment centres and bases, but Reinhold said two guns belonging to service members were recovered at the scene. Shots were fired from at least one, but it’s not yet clear if the gunman was hit by fire from one of those weapons, Reinhold said. The military will investigate whether the service members were authorized to have the guns. Reinhold declined to elaborate further on how the troops engaged Abdulazeez.
It’s too early to determine whether Abdulazeez was “radicalized” before the attacks, Reinhold said. But when asked if Abdulazeez acted alone, Reinhold said he was currently being treated as a “homegrown violent extremist.”
Abdulazeez spent several months with an uncle in Jordan last year as part of an agreement to get him away from drugs, alcohol and a group of friends his parents considered a bad influence, a person close to his family has said. That person spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The uncle has been detained in Jordan but hasn’t been charged with anything, according to the uncle’s attorney.
Friends and neighbours recalled Abdulazeez as a happy, polite young man. But a picture has also emerged showing a darker side, with Abdulazeez’s family saying he struggled with depression from his early teens, abused drugs, couldn’t keep a job and was considering bankruptcy.