CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — The fatal shooting at Navy Reserve facility in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in July was “inspired by terrorist organization propaganda,” FBI Director James Comey told reporters Wednesday in New York.
That is the first time the FBI has made that link though President Obama mentioned Chattanooga when talking about terrorism in the United States.
During the incident, Mohammad Abdulazeez opened fire on a military recruiting center, then drove seven miles away to a Navy reserve facility where he shot and killed four U.S. Marines and a sailor.
Abdulazeez has traveled to Kuwait and Jordan before the shooting according to CBS News.
He received an engineering degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2012 and worked as an intern a few years ago at the Tennessee Valley Authority, the federally owned utility that operates power plants and dams across the South.
Those killed were Gunnery Sgt. Thomas J. Sullivan of Hampden, Massachusetts; Staff Sgt. David A. Wyatt of Burke, North Carolina; Sgt. Carson A. Holmquist of Polk, Wisconsin; and Lance Cpl. Squire K. “Skip” Wells of Cobb County, Georgia.
Sullivan, Wyatt, and Holmquist had served in Iraq, Afghanistan or both.
