by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News March 13, 2026
An ISIS-linked gunman who shouted “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia on Thursday was stopped and beaten to death by ROTC students, the FBI said.
The FBI, which said the shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism, said the gunman had spent eight years in prison for attempting to aid the Islamic State.
The gunman, 36-year-old Mohamed Bailor Jalloh. opened fire on a classroom at Old Dominion University, killing one person and wounding two, the FBI said.
Dominique Evans, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Norfolk field office, said at a news conference that the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) students showed “extreme bravery and courage” and prevented further loss of life by stopping the gunman.
The students subdued him and “rendered him no longer alive,” Evans said. “I don’t know how else to say it.”
The victim killed in the shooting has been identified as military science professor and ROTC instructor Lt. Col. Brandon Shah, who had previously served in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.
Shah was a graduate of Old Dominion and also earned an MBA from the University of Georgia, and a master’s from the University of Kansas.
The gunman was sentenced in 2017 to 11 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to trying to provide material support to ISIS. He was released in December 2024.
The gunman was a naturalized U.S. citizen from Sierra Leone and served in the Virginia National Guard before quitting the military after listening to online lectures by Anwar al-Awlaqi, a leader of Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, he told investigators when he was arrested in 2016.
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