A convicted ISIS supporter shot and killed a decorated Army officer inside a classroom at Old Dominion University on Thursday, and the local prosecutor's first instinct was to blame the Second Amendment.
Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney Ramin Fatehi used his press conference not to focus on the gunman's terror ties or the federal system that put him back on the street, but to launch a broadside against firearms owners, lawmakers, and the Supreme Court. The gunman, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, 36, was identified as a former National Guardsman and U.S. citizen originally from Sierra Leone who was convicted for supporting ISIS in 2015. Officials said Jalloh served nine years of an 11-year sentence for attempting to hand information to ISIS and ISIL before being released from prison in 2024 during the Biden administration.
Two people died in Thursday's attack, including Jalloh. Two more were injured. The FBI is investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism, FBI Director Kash Patel said in a social media post.
Old Dominion University Police Chief Garrett Shelton said officers responded after receiving reports that people were being shot in one of the classrooms. But by the time law enforcement arrived, the threat had already been neutralized by the people Fatehi never mentioned at his press conference: Reserve Officers' Training Corps students.
ROTC, the college-based military training program for recruiting students into the U.S. armed forces, produced the men and women who ended the attack with their bare hands. FBI spokesman Dominique Evans said the ROTC students showed "extreme bravery and courage" and prevented further loss of life by stopping the suspect. Evans added that the students subdued Jalloh and "rendered him no longer alive."
The person who lost his life was Lieutenant Colonel Brandon Shah, a veteran Army helicopter pilot. Shah had attended ODU as an ROTC student and returned in 2022 as a program leader. In the Army, Shah had flown helicopters over Iraq, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe. He gave years of his life to the nation's defense and was killed by a man the federal prison system decided was safe to release.
According to the Daily Mail, Rather than address the fact that a man convicted for supporting a foreign terrorist organization was free to walk onto a college campus, Fatehi turned the press conference into a gun control rally. He told reporters at the press conference that the attack was the fault of the "pro-gun lobby."
This is not an ODU problem. This is a national sickness.
He then pointed at the police officers standing beside him and told the room it did not matter "how hard" they worked to prevent such attacks. "Somebody will be a victim eventually," he said.
Fatehi directed the public to blame lawmakers and the judiciary rather than examine how a convicted terror supporter obtained a weapon after leaving federal custody. His words from the press conference were pointed.
So, if you are looking for somebody to blame, don't look at anybody up here, look at our lawmakers who don't have the courage to implement sensible gun control measures, look to a Supreme Court that enables them, and do something about it.
In a separate statement, Fatehi acknowledged that Jalloh "is criminally responsible for his terroristic murder" but immediately pivoted to what he called "a bigger picture," describing Jalloh as "just the latest actor in the gun-fueled march of death in America." He cited an estimated 400 million guns in circulation and listed three Virginia university shootings: Virginia Tech in 2007, the University of Virginia in 2022, and now Old Dominion University. "The motivations in each of those shootings was different, but the means was the same: guns," Fatehi said, before calling on the nation to "end the death cult of gun absolutism."
When Fox News confronted Fatehi on his remarks, he did not retreat. "I absolutely stand by what I said. It is the truth, no matter how much the gun lobby wants to deny it," he said. He told Fox News: "No matter the ideology of an attacker, that attacker is more dangerous with a gun than without one."
Fatehi also dismissed his critics outright. "Internet trolls are angry and delusional? Stop the presses!" he said.
Fatehi's top two donors include the Soros-subsidized Justice and Public Safety PAC and Democracy PAC. His financial backers and his rhetoric at the press conference fit a familiar pattern: a prosecutor funded by progressive political money using a terror attack to advance a gun control agenda while sidestepping the institutional failures that enabled the attacker.
Authorities have not publicly confirmed how Jalloh obtained the weapon used in the attack, or whether any post-release supervision conditions applied to him after leaving federal prison. Investigators have not said whether Jalloh was on any watchlist at the time of the shooting, or whether any agency flagged his activities between his 2024 release and Thursday's attack. No specific criminal statutes or court documents related to Jalloh's original conviction have been publicly identified in connection with the current investigation.
These are the questions that matter. A man convicted of providing support to ISIS served nine years of an 11-year sentence, walked out of a federal prison during the Biden administration, and less than two years later allegedly carried out what the FBI is now investigating as an act of terrorism on a college campus. The ROTC students who stopped him with "extreme bravery and courage" did what the system failed to do.
Fatehi wants the country to talk about gun control. The country should be asking why Mohamed Bailor Jalloh was free in the first place.
