Tag Archives: Chattanooga Shooting

FBI: Chattanooga Shooter Motivated By Terrorist Propaganda

The man who killed five people in shootings this summer in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was inspired by foreign terrorist propaganda, FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday.

Comey made the comments while speaking at a news conference in New York.

“We have concluded that the Chattanooga killer was inspired by a foreign terrorist organization’s propaganda,” Comey told reporters, though he added the source of the propaganda couldn’t be determined and stopped short of mentioning a specific group.

“There’s competing foreign terrorist poison out there,” Comey said at the news conference. “But, to my mind, there’s no doubt that the Chattanooga killer was inspired and motivated by foreign terrorist organization propaganda. We’ve investigated it from the beginning as a terrorist case.”

Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez opened fire at two military locations on July 16.

The Kuwait native and naturalized U.S. citizen first fired upon a recruiting center, then drove seven miles to a Naval reserve facility and opened fire again. The 24-year-old killed four Marines and a sailor, all of them located at the reserve, before he was killed in a shootout with police.

In a televised address to the nation from the Oval Office on Dec. 6, President Barack Obama called the Chattanooga shooting an act of terrorism. But authorities had offered little public detail about why they believed it was terrorism-related until Comey’s comments Wednesday.

Terrorist groups often use social media to spread propaganda and communicate, and federal lawmakers have proposed new bills to combat that in the wake of the Dec. 2 mass shooting that killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California. Obama has also called that an act of terrorism.

Fifth Chattanooga Shooting Victim Dies

A Navy petty officer wounded in the terror attack on two military recruiting centers in Chattanooga, Tennessee has died from his wounds.

The fallen soldier is Navy Petty Officer Randall Smith.  He leaves behind a wife and three young daughters.

Smith’s mother Paula Proxmire went to the memorial site for those slain by Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez and placed an American flag and baseball mitt in honor of her son.  She said that America and baseball were her son’s passions.

“My son is a hero. He died doing what he loved. He would have had it no other way,” Proxmire, from Kansas, told NBC News. “He’s been my hero since the day I gave birth to him.”

Meanwhile, the family of Abdulazeez reportedly told investigators that their son suffered from depression and was a drug addict, so they sent him to Jordan to try and get him away from Chattanooga friends who were a “bad influence.”  However, relatives and friends admitted they saw changes in his behavior after his return from seven months in Jordan.

Investigators say Abdulazeez sent a text message to a friend before the attacks that included the Islamic verse “Whoever shows enmity to a friend of mine, then I have declared war against him.”

The FBI reports there is nothing to connect the gunman to ISIS or any other international terrorism group.

Chattanooga Shooting Suspect’s Jordan Trip Scrutinized

Terrorism investigators are looking closely at a trip taken to Jordan by Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez to see if he had contact with known terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.

FBI officials say that Abdulazeez spent seven months in Jordan last year, one of several trips he had made to the region over the last few years. He went to Jordan in the last weeks of 2005, in the summer of 2008, the summer of 2010 and during the spring of 2013.  The trips lasted anywhere from two weeks to two months.

Despite the pattern of trips, the FBI admitted Abdulazeez was not on their watch list of possible terrorist sympathizers or operatives.

However, his father had been investigated years prior for giving money to an organization that had suspected connections to terrorists.

Abdulazeez’s attack on two Navy recruiting centers left four Marines dead.  They have been identified as Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, of Springfield, Mass., Lance Cpl. Skip “Squire” Wells, of Marietta, Ga., Sgt. Carson Holmquist, of Grantsburg Wisc., and Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, of Chattanooga.

Security experts say that the shooting shows an inherent weakness in recruiting stations for the military.  The locations need to be easily accessible to the public.

“They’re supposed to be convenient; they’re supposed to be easily accessible,” Brian Michael Jenkins, a security expert who is senior adviser to the president of the RAND Corporation, told the New York Times. “They’re virtually no more protected than a shoe store in a shopping mall.”

Chattanooga Shooter Identified

Law enforcement officials have released the name of the shooter who injured three people and killed four marines in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The alleged gunman is 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez. It is believed Abdulazeez was born in Kuwait, but there is no evidence to the status of his citizenship at this time. He was reportedly from Hixson, Tennessee, a town located across the river from Chattanooga.

Officials have stated that Abdulazeez was “not on the FBI’s radar” before the attacks and that it’s too early to establish a motive.

Abdulazeez was reportedly killed, but no details regarding his death has been released by officials at this time.