ROTC professor killed in Old Dominion classroom attack as cadets subdue convicted ISIS supporter

The Army ROTC class in Old Dominion University’s Constant Hall had just settled into a Thursday morning routine when a man stepped into the doorway shortly before 10:50 a.m.

He asked if it was the Army class, witnesses told investigators. When someone said yes, he is reported to have shouted “Allahu akbar” and opened fire.

Within minutes on March 12, Lt. Col. Brandon Shah, the university’s professor of military science and leader of its Army ROTC program, lay mortally wounded. Two others associated with ROTC were shot. The gunman, a former Virginia Army National Guard soldier previously convicted of trying to help the Islamic State group, was dead on the classroom floor — overpowered and fatally wounded by his intended victims.

University police say officers reached Constant Hall in less than 10 minutes from the first 911 call. By then, the shooting was over.

Federal authorities have identified the attacker as 36-year-old Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Sierra Leone who once wore the same uniform as the cadets he targeted. The FBI and Justice Department say they are investigating the Old Dominion University shooting as an act of terrorism.

“This was an act of terrorism targeting our military community,” FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on social media, adding that his agency was “working closely with our partners to determine whether the attacker had help and how he obtained his weapon.”

The attack has shaken a campus where nearly one in three students has a military affiliation and raised urgent questions about how a previously convicted ISIS supporter, still on federal supervision, managed to end up in a university classroom with a gun.

A professor killed, cadets wounded — and fighting back

Authorities say the gunman entered a second-floor classroom in Constant Hall, home to Old Dominion’s business school, where an Army ROTC class was underway. He asked whether it was the ROTC course, then began firing when told it was.

Shah, 40, was shot and later pronounced dead. The U.S. Army Cadet Command said two members of the ROTC program were also struck by gunfire. Sentara Norfolk General Hospital reported that one victim who initially was in critical condition was upgraded to fair; the other was treated and released.

What happened next altered the trajectory of the attack.

Several ROTC cadets rushed the gunman as he fired, tackling him to the ground and disarming him. Law enforcement officials said students used physical force, and at least one sharp object, to subdue him. He died at the scene from his injuries.

Dominique Evans, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Norfolk field office, said the students’ actions almost certainly prevented a mass-casualty event.

“The cadets in that room showed extreme bravery and courage,” Evans told reporters. “There is no question that their actions saved lives.”

Old Dominion Police Chief Garrett Shelton said less than 10 minutes elapsed between the first call of shots fired and officers confirming the shooter was dead. University alerts instructing students to shelter in place flashed across phones and computer screens as police swept Constant Hall and locked down surrounding buildings.

In a message to students and staff later that day, Old Dominion President Brian Hemphill said the university had “faced a tragedy on campus” and was canceling classes and operations on its main Norfolk campus for the rest of March 12.

“We are heartbroken by the loss of Lt. Col. Shah and the injuries to members of our Monarch and Army families,” Hemphill wrote, promising counseling and other support for students and employees.

Shah, an Old Dominion alumnus who completed ROTC at the university in 2007, was a career Army helicopter pilot who had deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and Eastern Europe. A historically Black university in South Carolina, Voorhees University, said he was the son-in-law of one of its trustees.

The Army said in a statement that its leadership was “deeply saddened” by the shooting and praised the “selfless courage” of the cadets who intervened.

From National Guard specialist to ISIS conviction

For federal investigators, the Old Dominion attack is the second time Jalloh’s name has appeared in a terrorism case file.

Court records show he served as a specialist in the Virginia Army National Guard from 2009 to 2015. In 2016, he was arrested after an FBI undercover investigation and charged with attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State group, a foreign terrorist organization under U.S. law.

According to a Justice Department statement of facts filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia, an Islamic State member introduced Jalloh to someone he believed was an ISIS operative but who was actually working with the FBI. Investigators said Jalloh expressed admiration for the 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and for the 2009 Fort Hood attack, and discussed carrying out a similar assault on U.S. soil, particularly against members of the military.

Prosecutors said Jalloh sent $500 by Western Union to the purported ISIS contact and took steps to buy gear and a rifle-style weapon, although agents intervened before any attack took place.

In October 2016, Jalloh pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to provide material support to ISIL under 18 U.S.C. § 2339B. He was sentenced in February 2017 to 11 years in federal prison and five years of supervised release.

At sentencing, he submitted a letter to the judge saying he felt like “a complete idiot” for having embraced extremist views, according to contemporaneous reporting on the case.

Prison and court records reviewed by reporters show Jalloh was released from federal custody in December 2024, less than two years before the Old Dominion shooting. He remained on supervised release — a form of post-incarceration monitoring that typically includes mandatory check-ins, restrictions on travel and prohibitions on possessing firearms — when he walked into Constant Hall on March 12.

Federal officials have not publicly detailed why he was released when he was, beyond standard credits for time served awaiting trial and other routine sentence calculations. Terrorism offenders are generally excluded from some early-release programs, such as the federal Bureau of Prisons’ Residential Drug Abuse Program, but can still earn limited good-conduct time under federal law.

The FBI and U.S. Probation Office have not said whether Jalloh was considered high-risk, whether he complied with supervision requirements or whether any red flags emerged before the shooting.

A defaced gun and unanswered questions

Investigators say the firearm recovered in the classroom had an obliterated serial number, complicating efforts to trace its origin. As a convicted felon, Jalloh was barred from owning or possessing guns.

Law enforcement officials are working to restore the serial number and determine where and how the weapon entered the black market, and who may have helped him obtain it. They are also examining his electronic devices and communications to see whether he had contact with extremist networks after his release or received any direction or encouragement.

So far, officials have not publicly identified any co-conspirators. Evans said investigators are working to determine whether Jalloh acted entirely on his own.

A campus shaped by the military and shaken by terror

Old Dominion University, a public research institution with roughly 24,000 students, sits in the heart of Norfolk, near some of the largest Navy and joint military installations in the country. The school says almost 30% of its students are active-duty personnel, veterans or military family members.

The Army’s ROTC battalion at Old Dominion is one conduit into the officer corps for that community. Shah, an alumnus who returned to campus to lead the program, oversaw cadets who split their days between business lectures and field exercises.

The attack on their classroom has underscored both the vulnerabilities and the responses that define an urban campus.

Norfolk and campus police have long worked together on routine crime and safety issues, including a 2025 double shooting in a parking lot near a dining hall that was not linked to terrorism. The speed with which officers converged on Constant Hall on March 12 — and the fact that the shooter was already incapacitated when they arrived — has already become a part of the narrative around the attack.

Governor Abigail Spanberger said state police and victim services personnel had been dispatched to assist.

“We condemn this horrific act of violence in the strongest possible terms,” she said in a statement. “Our hearts are with the Old Dominion community, and we will do everything we can to support the investigation and those affected.”

Virginia’s congressional delegation, including Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and Reps. Bobby Scott and Jen Kiggans, also issued statements. Kiggans, whose district includes parts of the Hampton Roads region, called the shooting a “horrific tragedy that never should have happened” and questioned how a known ISIS supporter was able to carry out an attack on ROTC cadets after leaving federal custody.

A rare kind of campus shooting and a brewing policy debate

School shootings remain a grimly familiar feature of American life, but attacks on campuses tied to international jihadist groups are rare. Most campus gun violence stems from personal disputes, crime or mental health crises rather than foreign terrorist organizations.

That rarity has not softened the alarm among lawmakers and security officials now staring at a case in which a person once identified, prosecuted and imprisoned as a terrorism risk returned to violence after his release.

For years, federal officials and outside researchers have described low rates of terrorism-specific recidivism among released extremist offenders compared with the broader federal prison population. Yet those same analysts have warned that a single failure can carry far greater human and political costs than typical reoffending.

Advocates of tougher measures have previously pushed for enhanced notification to local authorities when terrorism convicts are released, specialized reentry and mental health programs for extremist offenders and closer cooperation between probation officers and counterterrorism agencies. Civil liberties groups have urged caution, warning against permanent stigmatization of people who have served their sentences.

The Old Dominion shooting is poised to become a test case in that long-running debate.

It has also revived familiar arguments over firearms. Gun-control proponents point to Jalloh’s defaced-serial-number weapon as evidence of the need for stricter regulation of ghost guns and enhanced enforcement against illegal trafficking. Gun-rights advocates argue that existing prohibitions already failed to stop a determined attacker in a gun-free campus setting.

For the students and faculty who barricaded themselves inside classrooms and offices as sirens wailed outside Constant Hall, the policy fights now gathering around their tragedy are still at a distance.

On campus, the focus remains on mourning Shah, supporting the injured cadets and grappling with the knowledge that the man who opened their classroom door had once sworn an oath to the same country they intend to serve — and that in the seconds after he turned his weapon on them, they were the ones who ran toward the sound of gunfire.