What to know about attacks at a Virginia university and Michigan synagogue

Communities were left reeling from attacks that unfolded less than two hours apart at a Michigan synagogue and Virginia university, violence that officials said would have been bloodier without intervention from residents.

In Virginia, a former Army National Guard member, who served years in prison for attempting to aid the Islamic State, opened fire Thursday on a classroom at Old Dominion University, killing one person and wounding two others. ROTC students subdued and killed him, authorities said.

In Michigan, a man, who had learned a week earlier that four of his family members were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon, rammed into a synagogue and then killed himself, authorities said. None of the 140 children and staff inside were hurt, but a security officer was hit by the vehicle and knocked unconscious.

Here is more information on what happened:

Old Dominion University shooting

Mohamed Bailor Jalloh yelled “Allahu akbar” and asked whether those in the university classroom were holding an ROTC event before he opened fire, according to authorities and court papers.

Jalloh killed Lt. Col. Brandon Shah, an ROTC leader, and wounded two others, according to officials. FBI officials praised the students’ bravery for preventing further harm.

One of the people wounded has since been released from the hospital while Sentara Health said the other person is in fair condition.

ROTC students receive a scholarship to attend college while training to become commissioned officers in the U.S. military.

The campus shooting is being investigated as an act of terrorism, FBI Director Kash Patel said on social media.

Who was the Virginia Shooter

Jalloh was a naturalized U.S. citizen from Sierra Leone who was a specialist with the Virginia Army National Guard until 2015, when he was honorably discharged.

In 2017, he pleaded guilty to providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, the Islamic State group, and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was released early after completing a drug treatment program, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

It wasn’t clear how he qualified since inmates serving sentences for terrorism-related offenses typically aren’t eligible for such programs or other sentence-reducing credits.

Jalloh had been transferred from a prison facility to a residential reentry center, or halfway house, in August 2024, and released from federal custody later that year, according to court records.

He was on probation and taking online classes at the university at the time of the shooting.

Michigan synagogue attack

Ayman Mohammad Ghazali, 41, waited in his car outside Temple Israel, near Detroit, for about two hours with a rifle, commercial grade fireworks and jugs of liquid believed to be gasoline, before crashing into the building full of dozens of children.

He started firing his gun through the windshield, exchanging fire with an armed security guard. Ghazali fatally shot himself after he got stuck in his vehicle and the engine caught fire, said Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit field office.

The FBI, which is leading the investigation, described the attack on one of the nation’s largest Reform synagogues as an act of violence targeting the Jewish community, but said that they didn’t have enough evidence yet to call it an act of terror.

Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard credited preparation and training for the swift response to the attack.

Man who attacked synagogue had lost family

Ghazali was a Lebanese-born man who had recently found out that an Israeli airstrike in his native country had killed his two brothers, a niece and a nephew, an official in the town of Mashgharah told the AP. They were killed at their home just after sunset while having their fast-breaking meal during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The official, who requested anonymity because he could not publicly discuss details of the airstrike, also said their mother was seriously wounded and remains in the hospital.

Israel has stepped up attacks on the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon as the war with Iran has spread violence across the Middle East.

Ghazali came to the U.S. in 2011 on an immediate relative visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen and was granted U.S. citizenship in 2016, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

He lived in a single-story brick home in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn Heights about 38 miles (61 kilometers) south of the synagogue.