Federal investigators are treating the classroom attack that killed an ROTC instructor and wounded two others as terrorism.
NORFOLK, VA — A former Army National Guard member who once served prison time for trying to support the Islamic State opened fire in an ROTC class at Old Dominion University on Thursday, killing one instructor and wounding two others before students overpowered and killed him, authorities said.
Investigators identified the gunman as 36-year-old Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a former Guardsman who pleaded guilty in 2016 to attempting to provide material support to ISIS. The FBI said Thursday night that it is investigating the attack as terrorism. The shooting shook Old Dominion’s Norfolk campus just before spring break, left one Army ROTC member in critical condition, sent students running from classrooms and raised urgent questions about how Jalloh, who had been on supervised release after an 11-year sentence, came to target the group on Thursday morning.
Authorities said the attack began shortly before 11 a.m. in Constant Hall, an academic building on the eastern edge of campus. According to officials and local reporting, Jalloh entered a classroom and asked whether the people inside were with the Army. When someone answered yes, he pulled out a handgun, shouted “Allahu Akbar” and opened fire. Lt. Col. Brandon Shah, the class instructor and an ROTC leader at the university, was hit and later died at a hospital. Two others in the room were also shot. Students in the class then rushed the gunman and stopped him. Dominique Evans, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Norfolk field office, said their actions showed “extreme bravery and courage” and prevented further loss of life.
The FBI said the students subdued Jalloh and left him dead at the scene, though Evans told reporters he was not shot and did not explain exactly how he died. That missing detail remained one of several unanswered questions Thursday night. Officials had not said how Jalloh got onto campus, whether he had any recent connection to Old Dominion or whether he had chosen the classroom in advance. They also had not released the names of the two wounded people. Army officials told reporters that two of the people struck by gunfire were part of the ROTC program. Sentara Health said one hospitalized victim was in critical condition Thursday, while another person who was hurt had been treated and released. By late evening, the focus of the investigation had shifted from the immediate crime scene to Jalloh’s background, movements and possible motive.
Old Dominion sent an active threat alert to students and staff at 10:48 a.m., warning the campus to shelter in place and follow run-hide-fight guidance while emergency crews rushed toward Constant Hall. Videos from the scene showed students moving quickly across lawns, police cars and ambulances crowding campus roads and officers clearing buildings as sirens echoed across the area. The university later canceled classes and suspended operations on its main campus through Friday. In a message to the campus community, President Brian Hemphill thanked first responders and said there were no words for the violence that hit the school. For many students, the timing made the shock sharper. Classes were about to break for spring recess, and what had been an ordinary late-morning class period turned into a mass emergency that locked down one of the region’s largest public universities.
Shah, the instructor who was killed, had deep ties to the ROTC program at the university. Old Dominion’s website said he attended the school as an ROTC student and returned in 2022 to help lead the program. His military biography said he had flown helicopters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Eastern Europe during his Army career. Voorhees University in South Carolina identified him Thursday as the son-in-law of one of its trustees, and tributes began to circulate online within hours of the shooting. His death quickly became the human center of the tragedy on a campus where many students knew the ROTC unit by sight, if not by name. The attack did not strike a random crowd in a hallway or common area. By investigators’ early account, it hit a classroom tied to military training, which is one reason federal officials were treating the case not only as homicide but also as a possible terror attack with ideological roots.
Those roots stretch back nearly a decade. Federal prosecutors said in 2016 that Jalloh, then a former member of the Army National Guard living in Northern Virginia, tried to help procure weapons for what he believed would be an ISIS-inspired attack in the United States. Court records and Justice Department statements said he also tried to provide money to help people seeking to join the group. Investigators said he had listened to lectures by Anwar al-Awlaki, traveled to Africa and made statements that alarmed federal agents. In February 2017, he was sentenced to 11 years in prison and five years of supervised release after pleading guilty to attempting to provide material support to ISIS. On Thursday, Evans said Jalloh had admired the 2009 Fort Hood killings and aspired to carry out an attack like that one. That history, together with his words in the classroom, gave investigators an immediate basis to classify the shooting as terrorism-related.
What remains less clear is how Jalloh got from that earlier federal case to a fatal attack at Old Dominion on March 12, 2026. AP reported that he had been released from federal custody in December 2024 and was still under supervised release, which works much like probation, when the shooting happened. Officials said Thursday that they did not yet know why his prison term had ended earlier than the full 11-year sentence announced in 2017. Federal inmates can receive credit that shortens time in custody, but authorities had not said whether that applied here. Nor had they explained whether Jalloh had been subject to any special monitoring because of his terrorism conviction, whether any warning signs had appeared in the months before the shooting or whether he had legally obtained the gun used in the attack. Those questions are likely to shape the next phase of the federal review as investigators retrace his steps, contacts and online activity.
The legal and procedural picture Thursday night was moving on two tracks. Norfolk police secured the scene and handled the immediate campus response, while the FBI took the lead on the terrorism investigation. That means federal agents are expected to review physical evidence from the classroom, ballistics, digital devices, travel and financial records, and Jalloh’s communications before the shooting. Authorities have not announced any accomplices, and none were publicly identified Thursday. Because the suspect is dead, there will be no criminal prosecution of Jalloh, but investigators can still bring charges against anyone found to have helped him or known about the plot in advance. Officials also have to complete autopsies, formally identify the injured victims, and determine the exact cause of Jalloh’s death. The university, meanwhile, faces a more immediate schedule: supporting students and staff, deciding when full operations can resume and addressing what security changes may follow.
The scene on campus reflected both panic and quick action. Students who were nowhere near the classroom still received emergency alerts and scrambled for cover as police poured in. Others watched from dorms and nearby buildings as officers swept the area and medics carried victims out. Some of the most important voices in the story, though, came from people who never sought attention: the ROTC students who charged the gunman after he opened fire. Evans said their intervention “undoubtedly” saved lives, a judgment echoed in later public statements from federal officials. That praise also underscored the closeness of the violence. This was not an attack stopped at a distance by a perimeter or a locked gate. It ended inside a classroom, in a struggle after rounds had already been fired, leaving a decorated instructor dead and a university community trying to absorb what happened in a matter of seconds.
By late Thursday, the known toll stood at two dead, including Shah and the gunman, with one wounded victim still in critical condition and another released after treatment. Federal agents were continuing to investigate the shooting as terrorism, and the next major updates were expected from law enforcement and university officials on Friday.
Author note: Last updated March 12, 2026.