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A convicted ISIS supporter walked into an ROTC classroom at Old Dominion University on Thursday afternoon, asked if it was a military training class, and opened fire when someone confirmed it was. He killed a retired military officer who was instructing the cadets. He wounded two others. And then a young ROTC student did what warriors do — he grabbed a knife and ended the threat permanently.
The gunman has been identified as Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a 36-year-old former Virginia National Guardsman and naturalized U.S. citizen from Sierra Leone. Jalloh was convicted in 2017 of attempting to provide material support to ISIS and ISIL, according to the Department of Justice. He was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison. Do the math. He served his time and walked back into American society with the same ideology that put him behind bars — and this time, he finished what he started.
FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed the shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism. “The shooter is now deceased thanks to a group of brave students who stepped in and subdued him — actions that undoubtedly saved lives along with the quick response of law enforcement,” Patel said. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is fully engaged and embedded with local authorities.
Let that sink in for a moment. A man who was convicted of conspiring with ISIS — who told an FBI source that launching an attack during Ramadan was “100 percent the right thing” — was released from federal prison and apparently faced no monitoring regime sufficient to prevent him from walking onto a university campus with a firearm during Ramadan and executing a retired military officer in front of his students. The system did not just fail. It performed exactly as designed by people who believe rehabilitation is always possible and second chances are a constitutional right, even for jihadists.
Jalloh’s background reads like a case study in radicalization that our intelligence community has been warning about for decades. After leaving the National Guard, he became a devoted follower of Anwar al-Awlaki, the slain leader of Al-Qaeda’s Arabian Peninsula branch. He traveled to Africa for six months, where — under FBI observation — he met with ISIL members and discussed his desire to launch his own terror attack. When he returned to the U.S., he attempted to buy firearms in North Carolina and then Virginia, where a gun dealer sold him an assault rifle but rendered it inoperable before he left the store. He was arrested the next day. That was 2016. This is 2026. A decade later, the same man carried out the very attack he always promised he would.
The heroism on display at Old Dominion cannot be overstated. An ROTC cadet — a student, not a trained combat operator — engaged and killed the gunman with a knife to prevent further carnage. That is the kind of courage that built this nation. That young person ran toward the gunfire while every instinct screamed to run away. ODU Police Chief Garrett Shelton confirmed one victim dead and two injured ROTC members in stable condition. The fallen instructor, a retired military officer, gave his life in service to the next generation of American defenders, just as he spent his career giving it for his country.
This attack happened on the same day a gunman rammed his vehicle into a Jewish synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan. Two suspected terror attacks on American soil in a single day. President Trump has warned repeatedly about Iranian sleeper cells and jihadist networks that entered the country during the Biden administration’s open-border disaster. “A lot of people came in through Biden with his stupid open border,” Trump said Wednesday. “But we know where most of them are. We’ve got our eye on all of them.” Jalloh was not a border crosser — he was a naturalized citizen. But the broader point stands: America has a domestic terror problem that sentencing guidelines and parole boards are woefully unequipped to handle.
The question that demands an answer from every lawmaker in Washington is simple: why was this man free? An 11-year sentence for conspiring to support ISIS — a man who openly discussed planning attacks during Ramadan — and the system released him back into a society he swore to destroy. Where was the post-release monitoring? Where were the red flags? Jalloh did not suddenly radicalize on Thursday morning. He walked out of prison the same man who walked in, and every bureaucrat who signed off on his release now has blood on their hands.
The unnamed ROTC cadet who stopped this massacre is everything right about America. While politicians debate funding and activists demand softer sentencing, a young student with a knife and an iron will did what the entire federal justice system could not — he made sure Mohamed Bailor Jalloh would never hurt anyone again. That cadet understood something fundamental: when evil shows up at your door, you do not wait for a committee to form. You act.
How many more convicted terrorists need to carry out the attacks they promised before we accept that some people cannot be rehabilitated — and that protecting the innocent must come before protecting the “rights” of those who seek to slaughter them?
Providence watches over the bold.
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