Mohamed Bailor Jalloh walked into a classroom at Old Dominion University on Thursday morning, confirmed it was an ROTC class, and opened fire. He shouted "Allahu Akbar" before the first shot. When it was over, Lt. Col. Brandon Shah was dead and two other people were wounded. The students in the room stopped the attack themselves. The shooter did not survive.
Jalloh, a 36-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Sierra Leone who spent six years in the Virginia National Guard, had been convicted in 2017 for his involvement in supporting the Islamic State. He was released approximately 15 months before the shooting.
The FBI, which is investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism, said the attack left one person dead and two others wounded. FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed the bureau's Joint Terrorism Task Force is "fully engaged, embedded with local authorities, and providing all resources necessary in the investigation."
According to Fox News, the gunman who opened fire on an Old Dominion University classroom was previously convicted of supporting ISIS and, according to court documents, was on probation for that terrorism-related charge when he carried out Thursday's deadly attack.
The Justice Department in 2017 requested a 20-year prison sentence for Jalloh, noting that he had made multiple attempts to join the Islamic State and had attempted to acquire a gun to carry out a murder plot in the United States. Prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum:
The defendant was fully aware of what he was doing, and the consequences of those actions. His only misgivings seemed to be a fear that he would waver at the critical moment.
They also noted:
By putting the idea of this murder plot into religious terms, and by suggesting that murdering members of the US military would be a path to heaven, the defendant showed how strongly committed he was to the deadly ideology of the Islamic State.
U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, sentenced him to 11 years instead. Under federal law, defendants must serve at least 85% of their sentences even when they receive credit for good behavior. Jalloh was out in December 2024. The prosecutors' warning was on record. The judge discounted it.
Let that sink in: federal prosecutors told a court this man was plotting to murder American soldiers in the name of ISIS. The court gave him 11 years. He served less. He walked into an ROTC classroom 15 months later.
The man Jalloh killed deserves more than a footnote in a terrorism story.
Shah was a professor of military science and a department chair at Old Dominion's ROTC program. He was commended in 2023 for increasing enrollment in the ROTC program by nearly 50%, from 95 to nearly 140 students. He enlisted in the Army in 2003 and was deployed in support of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shah was awarded two Bronze Stars.
Shah did not die in Fallujah or Kandahar. He died in a classroom in Norfolk, Virginia, teaching the next generation of American officers, shot by a man the federal justice system decided was not dangerous enough to keep locked up.
This was not a man whose radicalization appeared without warning. The trail was long and explicit.
Jalloh was originally arrested on July 3, 2016, after authorities said he tried to help procure weapons for what he believed would be an ISIS-inspired attack on U.S. soil and separately attempted to send money to support ISIS. The DOJ said he was compelled to leave the U.S. military after he began listening to the online lectures of Al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, and that Jalloh "praised" the July 2015 terrorist attack in Chattanooga, Tennessee, when a gunman killed four U.S. Marines and a Navy sailor.
Jalloh also shared that he had been thinking about conducting an attack similar to the attack at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009, which killed 13 people and wounded 32 others. His dream target, in his own words to investigators, was American military personnel. On Thursday, that is exactly who he found.
The Virginia National Guard confirmed that Jalloh served as a combat engineer from April 30, 2009, to April 29, 2015, when he was honorably discharged. He held the rank of specialist and served in the 276th Engineer Battalion, 91st Troop Command. That service gave him military training, familiarity with weapons, and knowledge of how ROTC programs operate. He returned to ODU after his release. An ODU official confirmed that Jalloh reenrolled at ODU in summer 2025 and was a current student at the time of the shooting.
At sentencing in 2017, Jalloh delivered the kind of speech that moves judges toward mercy. He wrote to Judge O'Grady beforehand, professing love for America:
I have and have always had deep respect and still have respect for the American people and the American values that I pledged to serve.
He denounced the ideology that had consumed him:
I reject and deplore terrorism and any groups associated with it, especially ISIL. I hate how I allowed myself to be manipulated and how ISIL manipulates troubled and impressionable people like me with their religious propaganda by appealing to Islamic solidarity and a skewed interpretation of selective verses from the Quran. I feel like a complete idiot for accepting such a superficial and dishonest interpretation of Islam, and for blindly accepting what I was being told.
He pledged to spend his life warning others away from radicalization. He said he loved the United States. The judge believed him. Prosecutors did not.
The record now speaks for itself.
Amid the grief, one fact demands recognition. FBI Special Agent in Charge Dominique Evans said the brave ROTC members in that room subdued Jalloh. One of the students stabbed him, according to multiple law enforcement sources briefed on the case. FBI Director Patel said their actions "undoubtedly saved lives along with the quick response of law enforcement."
Old Dominion University Police Chief Garrett Shelton said less than 10 minutes passed between when officers were called about a shooting in the university's business school building and when responders determined the shooter was dead.
These were college students training to become officers. When a terrorist entered their classroom, they did not freeze. They acted. They are the reason the death toll was one and not many.
The uncomfortable question now is not only what Jalloh did. It is what the system allowed.
Federal prosecutors identified him as a committed jihadist with a specific desire to kill American military personnel. They requested 20 years. A judge gave him 11. The Bureau of Prisons released him in December 2024, still under supervised release. The federal probation office that appeared to oversee his supervised release did not immediately respond to questions seeking comment.
The Fort Hood attack he admired. The Chattanooga attack he praised. The murder plot prosecutors documented in a sentencing memo. None of it was enough to keep him away from an ROTC classroom at the university where he had once been a student.
There is a broader pattern here. Time and again, individuals with documented ties to jihadist networks cycle through the federal justice system, receive sentences below what prosecutors request, and reenter civilian life still under ideological motivation that no courtroom speech erases. The system is built to give second chances. Terrorism is not a domain where second chances work in America's favor.
Lt. Col. Brandon Shah served two combat deployments, earned two Bronze Stars, came home, and spent his remaining years building the next generation of American soldiers. He was killed at his desk by a man the court decided deserved another chance.
The system made its choice. Brandon Shah paid for it.
