Marines ‘ran back’ into Chattanooga fight

A service member opened fire on the Chattanooga gunman after he crashed the gates of a military reserve center last week, an FBI investigator disclosed on Wednesday.

Reinhold confirmed that Chattanooga police had been in auto pursuit of the alleged gunman, Mohamad Abdulazeez, after he first fired shots from his vehicle at an armed forces recruitment center. Thomas Sullivan, Lance Cpl. Gen. Paul W. Brier, commanding general of the 4th Marine Division, said the Marines responded to the attack as he would have expected. Steve Daines of Montana, an Iraq war veteran, and Rep. Duncan Hunter of California put forward a narrower bill that would authorize one armed service member to be placed at a military recruiting center, many of which are at shopping malls, high schools, universities and other public places to encourage greater access. “Some willingly ran back into the fight”. He then drove about 7 miles to a Navy-Marine operations center where he killed four Marines and fatally wounded a sailor before he was shot and killed by police.

“At this point it’s too early in the investigation to determine whether or not he had been radicalised”, Reinhold said.

Nonetheless, FBI investigators in the U.S. discovered that “Abdulazeez wrote about suicide and martyrdom as long ago as 2013”.

Jordanian authorities arrested Assad Ibrahim Abdulazeez Haj on Friday and he was being interrogated by both Jordanian and U.S. investigators, his lawyer Abdul Qader al-Khatib said by telephone. The special agent said investigators would not be able to explain any of the pieces of evidence gathered so far until their probe was complete.

Reinhold said only that the FBI would investigate every possibility and every relative, no matter where they are.

Chattanooga shooter Adbulazeer went to live with his uncle in Jordan for several months in 2014, reportedly to help get him away from the influence of drugs, alcohol, and a group of friends whom his parents did not approve. None of the weapons were modified, he added. At the same time, Marines ran from room-to-room, trying to get their fellow service members to safety. Reinhold said whether that service-member was authorized to be carrying a weapon is beyond the scope of the FBI investigation, and may later addressed by a separate U.S. military investigation. “We believe he acted on his own that day”, Reinhold said.

“There were hundreds of rounds fired” by Abdulazeez and the Chattanooga police, said the law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, making for an unusually complex forensics effort to piece together what happened. He also lauded the service members – all but two, apparently, weren’t armed – who risked their lives to help others and stop the carnage.

Authorities have identified the attacker as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, 24, but the correct spelling of his name is in dispute, with federal officials and records giving at least four variations.

Meanwhile, The New York Times reported Wednesday that the gunman, 24-year-old Abdulazeez, searched the Internet in the days leading up to the attack for information from Islamic sources about whether martyrdom would to forgiveness for his sins, such as drunkenness.