Here's What We Know About the Alleged Chattanooga Shooter
Tuesday evening, the FBI identified 24-year-old Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez as the gunman who killed four Marines at a Chattanooga recruitment center today before dying in a shootout with police. Here’s what we know so far.
He Was a U.S. Citizen From Kuwait
While the citizenship of Abdulazeez, who was born in Kuwait, was not clear initially, NBC News reports that he was a naturalized U.S. citizen.
He Went to High School and College in the Chattanooga Area
The Times Free Press in Chattanooga reports that multiple people have said they attended school with Abdulazeez in the Chattanooga enclave of Red Bank.
Below is Abdulazeez’s purported Senior yearbook entry, where he darkly jokes, “My name causes national security alerts. What does yours do?”
According to Abdulazeez’s resume on Indeed.com, he later graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2012 with a degree in electrical engineering. The federally owned Tennessee Valley Authority has confirmed that Abdulazeez interned with them while a student there.
He Wrestled and Practiced Mixed Marital Arts
A classmate told the Times Free Press in Chattanooga that he was on the wrestling team with Abdulazeez at Red Bank High School and that the alleged shooter became a mixed martial artist after graduation.
Here's an older, undated photo of Abdulazeez, provided by a former coach. Photo likely 5 years old or so pic.twitter.com/cCaFBRel85
July 16, 2015
Below are highlights from Abdulazeez’s first sanctioned bout in 2009, which he won by TKO.
He Was Not on Law Enforcement’s “Radar” Before the Attack
A source told CBS News that Abdulazeez was “not on law enforcement radar” and the FBI was not aware him being threat.
“They’ve run an initial check on him. Right now, there is nothing popping early in the system on him, but that could change,” a senior official told ABC News. “They are still checking multiple other databases on him.”
However, The New York Times reports that Abdulazeez’s father was once under investigation:
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 generate any information on the son.