Army ROTC Instructor Killed in Old Dominion University Shooting; Former Guardsman and Ex-Convict Identified as Attacker

Lt. Col. Brandon Shah was midway through a Thursday morning lesson on small-unit tactics when a man he and his students did not recognize appeared in the doorway of their Old Dominion University classroom.

“Is this ROTC?” the visitor asked, according to law enforcement officials briefed on witness statements.

Shah, the head of the Army ROTC program at the Norfolk, Virginia, campus, confirmed that it was. The man stepped forward, shouted “Allahu akbar” and opened fire.

Within seconds, the professor of military science lay mortally wounded, two cadets had been shot, and a classroom of future Army officers had turned into a close-quarters fight for survival. Before campus police arrived, several cadets rushed the gunman, wrestled him to the ground and killed him in a struggle that authorities say almost certainly prevented further deaths.

The assailant who walked into Constant Hall on March 12 was not a stranger to the U.S. military. He was a former Virginia Army National Guard member who had once pledged support to the Islamic State group — and who had been released from federal prison just 15 months earlier after a terrorism conviction that was supposed to keep him locked up for most of a decade.

The Old Dominion shooting, which left Shah dead and two ROTC cadets critically wounded, is now at the center of a growing scrutiny of how the United States sentences, monitors and releases people convicted of supporting extremist organizations. It is also drawing attention to the flow of stolen guns into violent crimes and to the limits of campus security when a determined attacker targets a specific program.

Attack in Constant Hall

Authorities identified the gunman as Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, 36, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Sierra Leone. Investigators say Jalloh entered a classroom in Constant Hall, the university’s business school building, shortly before 11 a.m. and twice asked if he had found an ROTC event.

When students and Shah told him he had, Jalloh shouted the Arabic phrase for “God is great” and began shooting, killing Shah and injuring two cadets, according to the FBI and court documents. Students later told agents that amid the confusion and gunfire, some dove for cover while others made a split-second decision to charge the attacker.

“Those cadets displayed extreme bravery and courage,” Dominique Evans, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Norfolk office, told reporters. “Their actions stopped the attack and rendered the assailant no longer alive.”

Evans said Jalloh was not shot by responding officers. Several news outlets, citing unnamed law enforcement sources, have reported that one cadet used a knife during the struggle, fatally stabbing the gunman. Federal authorities have declined to publicly confirm the specific mechanism of his death, citing the ongoing investigation and privacy concerns for the students involved.

Old Dominion sent an emergency alert at 10:48 a.m. warning of an “active threat in Constant Hall” and instructing students and staff to run, hide or fight. A second message about a half-hour later said the shooter had been “neutralized” but urged people to avoid the area while police swept the building. University Police Chief Garrett Shelton said it took officers less than 10 minutes from the first 911 calls to determine the attacker was dead.

Victims and campus response

Shah, 42, an Old Dominion alumnus who had once sat in the same ROTC classrooms as a cadet, was pronounced dead at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. Two unnamed cadets were taken there in critical condition. The U.S. Army Cadet Command said three members of the ODU ROTC battalion — including Shah — were wounded in the attack.

“Lt. Col. Shah was a devoted family man, a revered leader, and a heroic protector even in his final moments,” university President Brian Hemphill said in a statement. “He returned to his alma mater to mentor and train the next generation of Army officers. Our community is heartbroken.”

Shah commissioned through ROTC at Old Dominion and became an Army helicopter pilot, deploying to Iraq, Afghanistan and Eastern Europe before returning in 2022 to lead the program that launched his career.

Old Dominion canceled classes and suspended most operations for the rest of March 12 and closed its main campus the following day. Constant Hall will remain shut for the remainder of the spring semester while investigators and university officials assess damage and security procedures.

Hemphill said the university is coordinating closely with local police and federal authorities and will review emergency protocols.

“The safety of our campus community is my top priority,” he said. “We take this responsibility very seriously and remain vigilant in our efforts to maintain a safe campus.”

A prior terrorism conviction and early release

Court records show Jalloh joined the Virginia Army National Guard as a young man but later grew sympathetic to the Islamic State. In 2016, after traveling to Africa and sending several hundred dollars to contacts linked to the group, he was arrested in an FBI sting in northern Virginia. Prosecutors said he praised the 2009 Fort Hood shooting and the 2015 attack on military sites in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and talked about committing a similar assault on U.S. service members.

Jalloh pleaded guilty in October 2016 to attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State under a federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2339B. He was sentenced in February 2017 to 11 years in prison and five years of supervised release.

But he did not serve the full term. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, he was released in December 2024, roughly two and a half years early, after completing the agency’s Residential Drug Abuse Program and earning time credits.

In the weeks after the Old Dominion shooting, BOP officials acknowledged that people convicted of terrorism-related offenses are supposed to be excluded from those benefits. The agency has called Jalloh’s early release a result of a policy gap and said it has since amended its rules to bar inmates with material-support-to-terrorism convictions from using the program to leave prison early.

Based on his original sentence and release date, Jalloh should have remained under federal supervision until 2029. Officials have not said how closely he was monitored after leaving custody, what conditions were placed on his movement or whether probation officers were aware he had enrolled in online courses at Old Dominion.

The FBI has said the attack is being investigated as an act of terrorism. In a social media post, Director Kash Patel said the bureau’s Joint Terrorism Task Force was fully engaged and credited “the extraordinary courage of students and first responders whose actions undoubtedly saved lives.”

Investigators are examining whether Jalloh had contact with any extremist networks after his release or acted alone. Agents searched his residence after the shooting and are reviewing his electronic communications, according to law enforcement officials.

A stolen handgun and an alleged illegal sale

The weapon used in the attack was a stolen 9 mm semiautomatic handgun, according to federal authorities. Prosecutors have charged a Virginia man, identified in court documents as Kenya Chapman, with illegally selling the gun to Jalloh.

Chapman is accused of stealing the handgun from a parked car in Newport News about a year before the shooting and later selling it through an illicit transaction. In an interview with federal agents, he said he did not know Jalloh planned to attack the university, according to an affidavit.

Old Dominion, a public research university with about 24,000 students and a large population of military families and veterans, generally prohibits firearms on campus except for law enforcement and other authorized purposes. The attack occurred despite those policies and despite Jalloh’s status as a felon barred under federal law from possessing a gun.

Wider repercussions

The shooting has reverberated across Virginia higher education. The day after the attack, several colleges and universities in the state, including the University of Virginia and George Mason University, received bomb threats that prompted evacuations and police searches. No explosives were found, but the wave of threats underscored the anxiety on campuses.

The attack also has become a flashpoint in Washington. A statement from the White House said the shooting “should have never happened” and linked it to what it called failures in the prior administration’s prison and early-release policies. Members of Congress from both parties have signaled interest in holding hearings on BOP’s handling of terrorism offenders, with some calling for mandatory full-term sentences or stricter limits on early release and rehabilitation credits in such cases.

Gun policy advocates are pointing to different aspects of the same event. Supporters of tighter firearms laws have highlighted the stolen gun and the alleged illegal sale to a prohibited possessor, arguing for more aggressive enforcement against gun trafficking and stronger requirements for reporting lost or stolen weapons. Gun-rights supporters have focused on the fact that the attack occurred on a gun-free campus and ended only after unarmed cadets physically overpowered the shooter.

Civil rights organizations have warned that the emphasis on Jalloh’s invocation of Islam and his prior case could fuel suspicion of Muslim students, including those in ROTC programs, and lead to overbroad surveillance or restrictions.

For Shah’s cadets, the debate in Washington feels far away. They have returned to training in relocated classrooms, their coursework now framed by the memory of a real-world attack that unfolded where they once studied doctrine on a whiteboard.

Outside the locked doors of Constant Hall, students have left flowers, unit patches and handwritten notes. One, propped against the wall where Shah used to walk in each morning, addressed the instructor they lost and the man who tried to kill them.

“We did what you taught us,” it read. “We wish you didn’t have to prove it was real.”