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The Federal Bureau of Investigation has officially opened a terrorism probe into a fatal shooting at Old Dominion University that occurred on the morning of Thursday.
Authorities identified the gunman as 36-year-old Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a naturalized citizen and former Virginia National Guard specialist who had been released from federal prison in late 2024.
The attack, which took place in Constant Hall resulted in the death of Lt. Col. Brandon A. Shah, a highly decorated Army aviator and the university's Professor of Military Science.
Two other Army personnel affiliated with the school's Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program were wounded in the gunfire and remain in stable but critical condition at local medical facilities.
Jalloh's history with federal law enforcement dates back a decade to a 2016 sting operation involving the attempted purchase of an AR-15 and the transfer of funds to an undercover agent he believed was an ISIS operative.
After serving a significant portion of an 11-year sentence, Jalloh was on supervised release at the time of Thursday's shooting. FBI Special Agent in Charge Dominique Evans confirmed that Jalloh shouted "Allahu Akbar" before opening fire on a classroom specifically occupied by ROTC students and their instructor.
The investigation is now focused on whether Jalloh coordinated the assault with external actors or if he was a "lone wolf" actor motivated by the same radical ideology that led to his initial imprisonment.
ROTC students neutralize the threat
The death toll was significantly mitigated by the immediate and courageous actions of the students present in the classroom.
According to eyewitness accounts and law enforcement briefings, the gunman entered the room and explicitly confirmed it was an ROTC class before discharging his weapon. R
ather than fleeing, several students engaged Jalloh in hand-to-hand combat. FBI Director Kash Patel credited these individuals with preventing a larger tragedy, noting that Jalloh was subdued and "rendered no longer alive" by the students before local police could reach the room. Law enforcement confirmed that Jalloh was not killed by gunfire; rather, he was terminated as a threat through physical intervention, which included reports of a student using a knife to stop the attacker.
"There were students in that room that subdued him, and rendered him no longer alive-I don't know how else to say it-they basically were able to terminate the threat," Evans stated during a Thursday evening news conference. "If not for them, I'm not sure what else he would have done."
The victim, Lt. Col. Brandon Shah, was a 2007 graduate of Old Dominion who returned to his alma mater in 2022 to lead the Monarch Battalion.
His military career included over 45 months of forward-deployed service in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe as an AH-64 Apache pilot.