A former Army National Guard member who had spent eight years in prison for attempting to aid the Islamic State opened fire on a classroom at Virginia’s Old Dominion University on Thursday before ROTC students subdued and killed him, authorities said.
He had yelled “Allahu Akbar” before the shooting, which left one person dead and two wounded, according to the FBI.
Dominique Evans, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Norfolk field office, said at a news conference that the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps students showed “extreme bravery and courage” and prevented further loss of life by stopping the gunman, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh.
The students subdued him and “rendered him no longer alive,” Evans said. “I don’t know how else to say it.” She confirmed Jalloh wasn’t shot but didn’t provide further details.
The man who opened fire in a classroom at Virginia’s Old Dominion University completed a drug treatment program that allowed him early release from federal prison, even though he was convicted of a terrorism charge that should have disqualified him from that benefit.
Mohamed Bailor Jalloh was sentenced to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty in 2017 to providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, the Islamic State group, and was released about 2½ years early, according to prison records.
The federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed Friday that Jalloh was released in December 2024 because of a loophole in a legal provision that allows some inmates to shave time off their sentences by completing a substance abuse treatment program.
The agency told The Associated Press that it has since closed the loophole and has changed its policies to bar inmates with terrorism-related convictions from being released in that manner. It said that its previous attempts to update a list of excluded offenses had stalled in negotiations with the union representing correctional workers, the Bureau of Prisons said.

I attended ODU back in 70-75 after a coupla’ years in RVN and lived on 49th St. about a block away from where this all came down..
I saw in the news that this criminal terrorist clown was released as part of Biden’s mass prison clemancy back in 2024 about the same time as pardoning SIX members of his family.
Dang, and I thought Nixon was a crook…
And so it goes