Family: Chattanooga shooter suffered from depression

Other friends said that he spoke of his anger about conflicts in the Middle East, including Israeli bombing in Gaza and the civil war in Syria, but his level of understanding and awareness really rose after he came back from a trip to Jordan past year.

During the stop, an officer noticed that Abdulazeez’s vehicle smelled like alcohol and marijuana, the report said.

The death occurred two days after a gunman killed four Marines during a shooting rampage on two military facilities.

The Chattanooga community has been gripped by grief for the victims and shock over how a seemingly normal kid became a cold-blooded killer. He refused to consent to the state blood test, police said. “We have no evidence he was killed by self-inflicted wounds”. They still don’t know what motived Abdulazeez.

But hours before the attacks, he sent what may have been an ominous text message to a friend, Reuters reported.

Sources said there is nothing that conclusively indicates that message was any kind of foreshadowing to the shootings. “Now they are wondering if that is how people still look at them”. And we now know that he texted a friend just before the attack with a link to a verse from the Koran that suggested the motivation for his actions.

Federal Bureau of Investigation spokesman Jason Pack declined comment on whether investigators were pursuing mental health records for Abdulazeez.

“In our culture, if a son or daughter is having those sorts of problems, they keep it a secret because of the shame”, Bassam Issa, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Chattanooga, told the AP, adding: “As a parent, you always want to be able to say your child is making you proud, not that they are struggling”. Abdulazeez was not on any USA databases of suspected terrorists.

Reinhold said there is nothing to connect the attacker to ISIS or other global terror groups.

(AP Photo/David Goldman). U.S. Army Pfc.

“A lot of people know we live there and that we’re Muslims”, she said.

Jordanian sources said Abdulazeez had been in Jordan as recently as 2014 visiting an uncle.

The official said that investigators were especially interested in Abdulazeez’s trip to Jordan and were trying to determine whom he met with, what he did, and whether he might have gone or tried to go anywhere else.

After the shooting, the friend texted Abdulazeez, asking him if he had heard about the attack. She said she is not dissuaded by what happened. “He never became close to me like he was before he went overseas”.

“We have cooperated with law enforcement and will continue to do so, as we understand there are many legitimate questions that need to be answered”, the statement reads. A fellow Red Bank High graduate, Hussnain Javid, said Abdulazeez was “very outgoing”.

Four Marines also died in the attack – which authorities are treating as “an act of terrorism” – before the gunman, Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez, 24, a naturalised United States citizen born in Kuwait, died in a shootout with police.

Plant management then contacted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other government officials, and it is “fully cooperating” with law enforcement, Walton said.

The official said Abdulazeez was different but it does not appear that he was showing the typical outward signs of someone who was going to lash out violently.

The governors of Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas issued the orders as security at recruiting centers comes under increasing scrutiny in the wake of the shootings. And several have called for armed National Guard members.

“Every one of our resources are being devoted to this investigation”, Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke told USA broadcaster CNN.

Since the shooting, governors of at least a half-dozen states have ordered National Guardsmen to be armed.