The FBI has opened a terrorism investigation into a shooting on Thursday at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, that killed one person and injured two others.
Citing court documents, Associated Press reported that less than two years after Mohamed Bailor Jalloh was released from prison for attempting to aid the Islamic State militant group, he opened fire in a classroom at Virginia’s Old Dominion University on Thursday before ROTC students subdued and killed him.
After Jalloh pleaded guilty in October 2016 to providing material support to the designated foreign terrorist organization, a federal judge sentenced him in 2017 to an 11-year prison term with credit for time served retroactive to his July 2016 arrest.
Jalloh was released from federal custody Dec. 23, 2024. It wasn’t immediately clear why his release from prison was 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.
He was on supervised release, which is comparable to probation, when he carried out the attack on Thursday. Based on his release date, that would’ve run into 2029.
Jalloh’s October 2016 plea came after a three-month sting operation in which he, then 26, confessed to an undercover FBI agent that 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 the terrorist group members in Africa earlier that year.
Jalloh later told the informant that the group had asked if he wanted to participate in an attack. He tried to donate $500 to the group, 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. The affidavit says he returned the next day and bought a different assault rifle. Prosecutors said the rifle was rendered inoperable before Jalloh left the store, unbeknownst to Jalloh. He was arrested the following day.
Little is publicly known about Jalloh, who was a naturalized citizen from Sierra Leone. But court documents depict him as a troubled man who was radicalized by a propagandist.
The Virginia Army National Guard confirmed he served as a specialist from 2009 until 2015, when he was honorably discharged. Jalloh told a government informant he quit the National Guard after hearing lectures from Anwar al-Awlaki, according to a 2016 FBI affidavit filed in his criminal case.
In a letter to the federal judge that presided over his sentencing, Jalloh wrote: “I feel deep regret in having been driven by my emotions rather than my intellect and becoming involved with such an evil organization. … I reject and deplore terrorism and any groups associated with it, especially ISIL.”
He wrote that he started using drugs after his girlfriend ended their six-year relationship.
“The pain I felt internally was unbearable, and drugs and alcohol were the only things that took that pain away,” Jalloh wrote. “I started doing marijuana, coke and mushrooms using one of them at least on a daily basis in order to kill the pain I was in and to fill in the void I felt internally.”
The letter itself remains under seal, but his lawyer included excerpts of it in his sentencing memorandum.
