A ‘homegrown violent extremist’
The FBI talks about the Chattanooga gunman and gives a timeline of the attack.
A Kuwaiti-born U.S. citizen who gunned down five servicemen in Chattanooga, Tenn., appears to have been a “homegrown violent extremist” operating on his own, investigators said Wednesday as they revealed chilling details of how the shooting unfolded.
Officials said they were following hundreds of leads as they searched for a motive in the July 16 assault by Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, a 24-year-old who was raised in suburban Chattanooga. Abdulazeez was killed in a gunfight after he opened fire, and FBI Special Agent Ed Reinhold told a news conference that he was shot by local police.
Reinhold gave a timeline of the shooting, saying it targeted two sites and began shortly before 11 a.m. when Abdulazeez drove to an armed forces recruiting center and fired shots at the building from his car. He then proceeded to a joint Marine and Navy reserve center a few miles away.
By then, Reinhold said, Chattanooga police were in pursuit, but they could not catch up to Abdulazeez before he crashed through the front gate of the reserve center.
Once inside the gate, Reinhold said, Abdulazeez got out of his car armed with an assault rifle, a handgun and “numerous magazines.” One service member spotted him from inside the building and fired. Abdulazeez fired back, then approached the building’s front door, walked inside and “shot the first person he saw,” Reinhold said.
The victim fell, fatally wounded. “He then made his way through the building, continuing to shoot at those he encountered,” Reinhold said.
Some fled out the back door, and someone apparently fired at Abdulazeez in an attempt to stop him, Reinhold said. Among the weapons found inside the facility were two belonging to service members. At least one had been discharged, but officials said they had not determined whether anyone was struck by fire from that weapon.
As people ran out the back door, Reinhold said, Abdulazeez went after them and shot four to death in the gated motor pool area. That was where Chattanooga police encountered Abdulazeez and killed him.
Reinhold said the episode — from the moment Abdulazeez crashed through the gate until he was killed — lasted three to five minutes.
Unlike some other mass shooters, Abdulazeez appeared to most friends to lead a well-adjusted life absent of outward signs of radicalization. Friends from high school have described him as a popular athlete who did well in classes.
But in the days before the shooting, he started a blog that equated his life with being in prison, and he praised the most devoted disciples of the prophet Muhammad for waging jihad to establish Islam. Abdulazeez had lost a job in Ohio in 2013, and he was charged with a DUI in April.
Reinhold said it was too early to say whether Abdulazeez had become radicalized or if something else led to the attack. The Associated Press reported this week that Abdulazeez’s family said he suffered from depression.
Reinhold said investigators had heard the same reports and were looking into them.
“At this time, we’re treating him as a homegrown violent extremist,” said Reinhold, who would not give details of what investigators had learned so far from Abdulazeez’s family and friends or from a computer and other items taken from his home. “We believe he acted on his own that day. We don’t have any indication anyone else was assisting him.”
On Monday, a family spokesman told the Associated Press that Abdulazeez was first treated by a child psychiatrist for depression at age 12 or 13. Abdulazeez also battled drug and alcohol abuse, said the family representative, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Relatives had sent Abdulazeez to Jordan for several months in an attempt to get him away from drugs and alcohol, the spokesman said.
Reinhold would not say where Abdulazeez obtained the weapons he used in the attack.