Editorial illustration
A convicted ISIS supporter walked into a college classroom in Norfolk, Virginia today, asked if it was an ROTC class, received confirmation, and opened fire on the instructor — a retired military officer who later died at the hospital. The gunman, identified as Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, was a thirty-six-year-old former Virginia National Guard soldier who had been sentenced to eleven years in federal prison in 2017 for attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State. He was released early in December 2024. Less than fifteen months later, he murdered a man whose life was dedicated to training the next generation of American service members. The New York Post confirmed Jalloh’s identity and criminal history.
Read that again. A man convicted of plotting an attack in support of ISIS — who had served in the United States National Guard and then betrayed that oath in the most fundamental way imaginable — was walking free on American streets with enough time left on this earth to choose another target. And choose he did. Old Dominion University’s Constant Hall became a killing ground because somewhere in the federal justice system, someone decided that a man who swore allegiance to a terrorist caliphate had served enough time.
But there is a hero in this nightmare, and his story deserves to be told with the weight it carries. A knife-wielding ROTC student — one of the very students Jalloh targeted — charged the gunman and stabbed him to death before more lives could be taken. Think about that for a moment. A young man or woman training to serve this country watched their instructor get shot, and instead of running, they fought. They grabbed a blade and ended the threat with their own hands. That is not just courage. That is the spirit of the American warrior, forged in the very classroom the terrorist tried to desecrate. According to law enforcement sources who spoke to the Post, two people were injured and the gunman was killed by the student’s actions.
This attack did not happen in isolation. On the same day, a truck rammed into the nation’s largest Reform Jewish synagogue in Michigan, and a shooter opened fire before being neutralized by armed security. President Trump has been warning all week about Iranian “sleeper cells” that may have entered the country during the Biden administration’s years of open-border policy. Speaking on Wednesday, Trump told Fox News’ Peter Doocy, “A lot of people came in through Biden with his stupid open border. But we know where most of them are. We’ve got our eye on all of them.” Meanwhile, as Fox News reported, Canadian lawmakers are sounding the alarm about hundreds of Iranian regime operatives harbored north of the border, with only a single deportation carried out despite 239 cancelled visas.
The question is no longer whether radicalized individuals are operating inside the United States. The question is how many more are out there, and why on God’s green earth a convicted ISIS plotter was released early enough to kill again. The Department of Justice under the Biden administration oversaw a justice system that treated national security threats like petty offenders. Jalloh received eleven years for conspiring to support a terrorist organization that beheaded journalists, burned prisoners alive, and enslaved women. He did not serve the full sentence. He walked out in December 2024 and, by March 2026, he had blood on his hands.
There is a reckoning coming for the soft-on-terror policies that allowed this to happen. DHS remains unfunded as congressional Democrats continue to block appropriations, even as today’s twin attacks underscore the urgency of the threat. The same politicians who call immigration enforcement “racist” and obstruct funding for the very agencies tasked with keeping Americans safe will offer their “thoughts and prayers” tonight without a shred of self-awareness about their role in enabling the conditions that led to this carnage. Are we supposed to believe this is all just coincidence — a convicted jihadist walking free, a synagogue under assault, sleeper cell warnings from the President, and a Congress that refuses to fund homeland security?
The retired military officer who died today gave his life in service to this country twice — once in uniform, and once in a classroom preparing young Americans to follow in his footsteps. He deserved better than to be gunned down by a terrorist the system failed to keep locked up. The ROTC student who stopped the attack deserves a medal and a nation’s gratitude. And every American deserves to know that their government will stop releasing convicted terrorists back onto the streets where they can finish what they started.
When a convicted ISIS supporter can walk free and kill an American hero in a college classroom, what does that say about where our priorities have been — and where they need to go?
Providence watches over the bold.
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