Updated 7/18/15
A gunman opened fire at two military recruiting stations in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Thursday morning, killing four U.S. Marines before dying in the attack. Three others, including one police officer, were wounded. On Saturday, one of the wounded, a sailor, died of his injuries.
According to Ed Reinhold, the FBI Special Agent in Charge, the Marines were killed at a recruitment center where the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marines all share offices. President Obama described the attack as a “heartbreaking circumstance” while cautioning that “we don’t know all the details.” According to CBS News, U.S. Attorney Bill Killian said officials were treating Thursday’s attack as an “act of domestic terrorism.”
The gunman was identified as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, 24, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Kuwait. Abdulazeez had attended high school and college in Chattanooga, where he graduated from the local University of Tennessee campus in 2012 with a degree in electrical engineering. Described as “quiet and friendly” and with an interest in wrestling and mixed martial arts, Abulazeez had, in recent months, turned more toward Islam, growing a beard and attending weekly religious services. In two blog posts published on July 13, Abdulazeez commented on passages from the Koran—in one post, he writes that life is “bitter and short.” Dr. Azhar S. Sheikh, a founding board member at the Islamic center where Abulazeez worshipped, said that the young man nevertheless showed no signs of extremism.