On July 16, 2015, 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez opened fire on two military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee, United States. He first committed a drive-by shooting at a recruiting center, then traveled to a U.S. Navy Reserve center and continued firing, before being killed in an exchange of gunfire with the police. Four Marines died on the spot. A Navy sailor, a Marine recruiter, and a police officer were wounded; the sailor died from his injuries two days later.
On December 16, following an investigation, former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director James B. Comey said that the shootings were "motivated by foreign terrorist organization propaganda."
Shootings
The shootings began shortly after 10:30 a.m. at the Armed Forces Career Center in a strip mall located on Lee Highway. The Center recruited personnel for branches of the United States military, including the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, and the Tennessee National Guard. There, Abdulazeez, using his AK-74, fired 30 to 45 shots into the office from inside a silver rental Ford Mustang convertible, wounding a U.S. Marine. He then escaped and led members of the Chattanooga Police Department on a seven-mile pursuit. At the time of the first shooting, only seven people, including the wounded Marine, were inside the recruiting center.
Abdulazeez drove seven miles (11 km) to a U.S. Navy Reserve center on Amnicola Highway in Chattanooga, where he rammed his vehicle through a security gate. He drove to one of the center's buildings, where the Inspector-Instructor staff of Mike Battery, 3rd Battalion, 14th Marines and sailors were working.
Abdulazeez first fired at it, then charged inside and continued firing, fatally wounding a U.S. Navy sailor. Abdulazeez then exited the building through the back and entered a fenced motor pool area, where he shot several Marines. Three to five minutes after the second shooting began, he reentered the building, where he fired upon responding police officers. He was eventually fatally shot by five police officers (Officers Keven Flanagan, Jeff Lancaster, Sean O'Brien, Lucas Timmons, Grover Wilson III) outside the facility.
Aftermath
The shootings spanned a thirty-minute period. Around 100 rounds were fired by Abdulazeez. Lock-downs were put into place near the sites of the shootings.
After the shootings, officials said that Abdulazeez was carrying a semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm handgun. A Saiga-12 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun was also recovered from his car. He was also wearing a vest that could hold extra ammunition. An AR-15 semi-automatic rifle was seized at Abdulazeez's home by police.
Investigators discovered a 9mm Glock handgun that may have been privately owned by one of the slain Marines and are determining if it was used against Abdulazeez during the shootings. It was also determined that the reserve center's commanding officer used a personal firearm against Abdulazeez.
Victims
Five people, excluding the gunman, died in the shootings. They included four U.S. Marines who died at the scene and one U.S. Navy sailor who died at a hospital two days later. All of them were shot at the U.S. Navy Reserve center, one inside a building and the other four at a nearby motor pool area. The victims all attempted to distract the gunman, returned fire, and assisted people in climbing a fence to safety. Some of the victims died while returning fire at Abdulazeez, providing cover for a larger group of potential victims who were escaping over a fence. They were identified as:
In addition, two other people were wounded. They were Sergeant DeMonte Cheeley, a Marine recruiter who was shot in the leg, treated, and released; and Dennis Pedigo Jr., a police sergeant who was shot in the ankle.
Perpetrator
Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez (September 5, 1990 – July 16, 2015), a resident of Hixson, Tennessee, was identified as the gunman.
Background
Abdulazeez, a naturalized US citizen, was born in Kuwait on September 5, 1990, to Palestinian-Jordanian parents. Abdulazeez held a temporary Jordanian passport as a travel document (commonly issued to Palestinians by the Jordanian government); Jordanian authorities emphasized that Abdulazeez was not a Jordanian citizen.
Abdulazeez migrated to the US with his family in 1996 and became a US citizen in 2003. According to The Washington Post, both of Abdulazeez's parents were self-described in their divorce proceedings "as natives of 'the State of Palestine'" and they "maintained a strict, conservative Muslim lifestyle." According to a law enforcement official, Abdulazeez's father had been placed on a terrorist watchlist and investigated many years before the shootings for giving money to an organization with possible terrorist connections. The father was questioned while on a trip abroad but was eventually removed from the watchlist. He was not charged with any crime and the information gained in that investigation revealed nothing about his son. During the Second Intifada, Abdulazeez, then fifteen, traveled with his father to Jamma'in, the village in the West Bank where the father was born, with the goal of acquiring a Palestinian ID.
Abdulazeez graduated from Red Bank High School. He earned an electrical engineering degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2012 and learned to manage electrical power systems as an intern with the Tennessee Valley Authority. On May 20, 2013, he began working as an engineer at the Perry Nuclear Generating Station in North Perry, Ohio, but was let go ten days later after failing a drug test. According to a spokesperson for FirstEnergy, which runs the station, Abdulazeez worked and received general training at an administrative office building only, and did not have access to sensitive information. In the three months prior to the shootings, Abdulazeez was employed with Superior Essex as a supervisor for its Franklin office.
Abdulazeez frequented a gun range with his co-workers.
Mental instability and substance abuse
Abdulazeez had drug and alcohol problems, and his family tried to place him in a rehabilitation program. The New York Times reported that limits on the family's health insurance coverage "thwarted their plan to have him go into rehab." The investigation after the shooting revealed that Abdulazeez "had serious psychological problems."
According to a family representative, Abdulazeez was abusing sleeping pills, opioids, painkillers, and marijuana along with alcohol. He had also been thousands of dollars in debt and was planning to file for bankruptcy. In 2012 or 2013, Abdulazeez began therapy for his drug and alcohol abuse. He had also received treatment for depression and often stopped taking his medication. Following the shootings, Abdulazeez's parents claimed that their son had been suffering from depression. According to a source that was provided by CNN, Abdulazeez was suffering from bipolar disorder.
Abdulazeez's travel and actions preceding the shooting
Abdulazeez did not attract the attention of the FBI before the shootings. Abdulazeez traveled to Jordan five times. His first trip was in 2003 and the last trip was between April and November 2014, when Abdulazeez visited a maternal uncle. This last visit was arranged by Abdulazeez's family, who wanted him to get away from friends they believed were bad influences on him. Abdulazeez also traveled to Kuwait in 2008.
Accounts on the length of Abdulazeez's stay with his uncle vary, ranging from two to seven months. Abdulazeez reportedly led a solitary life in Jordan.
Abdulazeez's sole known previous contact with law enforcement was an April 20, 2015 arrest for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI). A family spokesman said that the arrest triggered a severe increase in his depression.
After his 2014 visit to Jordan, Abdulazeez told friends that Jordan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia ought to have sent more help to Hamas during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict. They also noted a change in his behavior and that he made critical statements against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
In the months before the shooting, Abdulazeez regularly attended Friday prayers at a mosque. and was thought to have written a blog post in which he urged study of the Quran to give meaning to life. According to his family, Abdulazeez had searched online about martyrdom, and had been wondering whether becoming a martyr would absolve him of his sins. On July 20, several writings belonging to Abdulazeez, dating as far back as 2013, were discovered. In them, he wrote about having suicidal thoughts after losing his job due to his drug use and his desire to "becom[e] a martyr". Authorities searching his computer found that he owned CDs and had downloaded videos by al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki. An FBI spokesman stated that "[t]here are some pretty radicalized thoughts" in the writings.
None of the writings laid out plans for an attack or spelled out a motive, however. The motivation is surmised from the fact that on July 11, Abdulazeez bought ammunition at a Wal-Mart store. On July 13, he wrote long diary entries, describing life as a kind of prison and warning, "Don't be fooled by your desires, this life is short and bitter and the opportunity to submit to Allah may pass you by." He also wrote that people mistakenly thought that the Sahaba (companions of the Prophet) were priests "living in monasteries" but that this was untrue. The truth, he wrote, is that "[e]veryone one of them [sic] fought jihad for the sake of Allah. Everyone one of them [sic] had to make sacrifices in their lives." Hours before the shooting, he texted an Islamic verse to a friend that read, "Whosoever shows enmity to a friend of mine, then I have declared war against him."
Criminal investigation
An official participating in the investigation told The New York Times there was no evidence that Abdulazeez was in contact with any social media recruiters working for ISIL, explaining, "This case appears to be much more like the old model, where he was interested in radical Islam and sought to learn more about it online by looking at videos and readings."
The shooting was investigated by the FBI as a jihad case from the outset. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service was also involved in the investigation. On July 23, 2015, in the immediate aftermath of the attack, FBI special agent Ed Reinhold stated that the attack was being treated as the work of "a homegrown violent extremist" and that the FBI is exploring the idea that Abdulazeez was self-radicalized. The following month, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said that investigators might never be able to determine "what combination of disturbed mind, violent extremism and hateful ideology was at work." In November 2015, FBI Director James B. Comey said, "We're still trying to make sure we understand Abdulazeez, his motivations and associations, in a really good way."
On December 16, 2015, Comey said that the FBI investigation had concluded that "there is no doubt that [Abdulazeez] was inspired, motivated by foreign terrorist organization propaganda." Comey added that it was difficult to determine which specific terrorist group or groups inspired Abdulazeez. On the same day, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced that the Purple Heart would be conferred upon the victims of the shootings.
According to professor Charles Kurzman, the shootings were part of a "shift away from large-scale elaborate attempts to use weapons of mass destruction or other high-profile plots — the hallmark of al-Qaida and its affiliates — toward a lower tech do-it-yourself strategy" propagated by ISIL and other groups. President Barack Obama expressed similar thoughts in a December 2015 speech, saying:
The terrorist threat has evolved into a new phase. As we've become better at preventing complex, multifaceted attacks like 9/11, terrorists turned to less-complicated acts of violence like the mass shootings that are all too common in our society. It is this type of attack that we saw at Fort Hood in 2009, in Chattanooga earlier this year and now in San Bernardino.