Starting to look like it might have been a lone wolf attack.
Four Marines Killed in Chattanooga ShootingsBy RICHARD FAUSSET, ALAN BLINDER and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
JULY 16, 2015
A memorial near the shooting site in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Thursday. Credit Erik S. Lesser/European Pressphoto Agency
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Four United States Marines were killed Thursday after a gunman opened fire at two military facilities here, and the federal authorities said they were investigating the episode as an act of domestic terrorism.
The gunman, identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, 24, was also killed, and several others, including a police officer and a Marine Corps recruiter, were wounded. A senior Congressional official who had been briefed by law enforcement officials said Mr. Abdulazeez was a Kuwaiti-born Jordanian who became a naturalized citizen. (Earlier reports spelled the gunman’s name as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez.)
“Somebody brutally and brazenly attacked members of our armed services,” the Chattanooga police chief, Fred Fletcher, said at a news conference, where Mayor Andy Berke described Thursday as “a nightmare for the city.”
The gunman was not on the government’s radar, but law enforcement officials said that Mr. Abdulazeez’s father had been under investigation several years ago for possible ties to a foreign terrorist organization. At one point, a law enforcement official said that the father was on a terrorist watch list and was questioned while on a trip abroad but that he was eventually removed from the list. The official cautioned that the investigation of the father was old and did not generate any information on the son.
A booking photo, taken in April and released by the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office in Tennessee, shows a man identified as Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez.
President Obama told reporters Thursday in a brief statement in the Oval Office that, while all the details of the shooting were not yet known, the killings appeared to be the work of a lone gunman.
Mr. Obama expressed his “deepest sympathies” and described the deaths of the four Marines as “heartbreaking.”
“I’d ask all Americans to pray for the families who are grief-stricken at this point,” he said.
Jeh Johnson, the homeland security secretary, said in a statement that officials were “enhancing the security posture at certain federal facilities, out of an abundance of caution.”
Here in Chattanooga, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, William C. Killian, said that the F.B.I. was leading the investigation and that federal officials were “treating this as an act of domestic terrorism.” But he, like other federal officials, cautioned that the investigation would ultimately determine how the shooting would be classified.
Police officers entered the Armed Forces Career Center through a bullet-riddled door in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Thursday. Credit John Bazemore/Associated Press
Edward W. Reinhold, the special agent in charge of the bureau’s Knoxville division, said investigators had “not determined whether it was an act of terrorism or a criminal act.” He said he expected “several hundred” bureau employees to join the inquiry by the end of the day.
Investigators said the shootings unfolded over about 30 minutes at midmorning, first at a military recruiting center on Lee Highway and later at a Naval Reserve facility on Amnicola Highway less than 10 miles away. All of the fatalities occurred at the second scene, where Marines and sailors are trained for reserve duty.
Carolyn Taylor, an employee at Binswanger Glass, which has offices across the street from the Navy building on Amnicola Highway, said she had heard scores of gunshots in the hours before city officials announced, at around 1:15 p.m., that the “active shooter situation” had concluded.
“At least 100, at least, because it was several at one time,” said Ms. Taylor, who added that police officers had swarmed into the area, their weapons drawn, “and then, within seconds, we heard the gunfire.”
David Vaughn, 56, the president of VMO Graphics Inc., a commercial printer nearby, said he quickly locked down his plant after hearing gunshots and seeing an officer behind a police cruiser pointing a gun toward the reserve center.
The printing staff was quickly joined, Mr. Vaughn said, by employees and customers from Binswanger Glass, who fled across the street when the police searched the store.
They waited for hours, he said, watching television, talking and occasionally looking through a glass door to the wooded area the highway where the reserve center is. They saw a number of officers walk into the woods carrying shotguns after putting on bulletproof vests.
Mr. Vaughn said they were worried. “Are they coming this way? Are there more than one? It was unknown at that moment,” he said. Hours later, the police gave them an all-clear.
Officials said they believed that before the rampage at the reserve building, formally known as the Navy Operational Support Center, the gunfire began at an armed forces recruiting center tucked into a khaki-colored strip mall where the green hills of eastern Tennessee are visible in the distance. On Thursday afternoon, more than 20 bullet casings littered the parking lot.
Yellow police tape restricted access to the lot, but numerous bullet holes were visible in the plate glass of the recruiting center, which is wedged between a mobile phone retailer and an Italian restaurant. The bullet holes formed a rough horizontal line, suggesting that the gunman sprayed the weapon from one side to the other.
A gunman opened fire at a military recruiting office at about 10:45 a.m. Thursday. A police chase ensued, and several people were killed at a naval reserve center about 30 minutes later.
Michael Usher, 37, a Chattanooga resident, was waiting near the tape for word from his wife, Jackie Barber, who works at the phone store. He said that she had told him the business was having a good day when the employees heard two pops. “Pow pow,” he recalled.
Then, his wife told him, “It was rapid shots: pow pow pow pow pow pow.”
The workers dived to the ground and crawled to the back of the store. A few minutes later, Mr. Usher said, they emerged and saw a man in a Ford Mustang quickly leave the parking lot.
The day of gunfire unnerved Chattanooga, one of Tennessee’s largest cities and a place known more for its scenery and tourism than talk of terrorism and violence. After the shootings, local universities ordered lockdowns, and officials investigated reports of gunfire at the Bradley Square Mall, located in the Chattanooga suburb of Cleveland.
But much of the speculation turned out to be unfounded.
“There have been no shots fired at Bradley Square Mall,” the mall’s management said on its Facebook page, which added that a lockdown it had imposed was “a safety precaution.”
In Chattanooga, however, the horror was vivid and wrenching. In a statement, the Navy secretary, Ray Mabus, called the shootings “both devastating and senseless.”
He added, “While we expect our sailors and Marines to go into harm’s way, and they do so without hesitation, an attack at home, in our community, is insidious and unfathomable.”
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