A man who opened fire in a classroom at Old Dominion University in Virginia this week asked people in the room twice whether they were there for a Reserve Officers Training Corps event before shooting, according to an affidavit filed Friday.
The gunman, identified by the authorities as Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, stormed a classroom of active-duty service members and R.O.T.C. members on Thursday, shouting “Allahu Akbar,” an Arabic phrase meaning “Allah is greater.” He killed an Army service officer and wounded at least two other people before students subdued and killed him.
Mr. Jalloh, a 36-year-old former Virginia National Guard member, had served time in prison for trying to help the Islamic State, and he was on probation at the time of the attack. He was taking online classes at the university, court records said.
Also on Friday, federal prosecutors charged a Virginia man named Kenya Chapman for illegally selling the weapon Mr. Jalloh had used in the shooting. The serial number on the gun, a .22 caliber firearm, was partly altered, court records said. But investigators traced the weapon to Mr. Chapman through phone records that showed Mr. Jalloh had made several calls this month to a number associated with Mr. Chapman, including one made minutes before the attack. (As a felon, Mr. Jalloh could not legally purchase or possess firearms or ammunition, the Justice Department said.)
In a statement on Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that Mr. Chapman would “face the full weight of justice” for having illegally sold a gun to a “convicted terrorist.”
Mr. Chapman’s lawyers did not immediately return requests for comment on Friday.
The shooting at Old Dominion, in Norfolk, Va., came about two weeks after the United States and Israel launched joint military strikes against Iran, and it is one of several episodes that the authorities are currently investigating as acts of terrorism.
Hours after the attack on Thursday, a driver rammed his vehicle into a synagogue outside Detroit in a separate attack. Earlier this week, two young men were charged with trying to support the Islamic State after a homemade bomb was thrown at anti-Muslim protesters outside the residence of Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York.
On Friday, the authorities executed a search warrant of Mr. Chapman’s home in Smithfield, Va., and found ammunition that matched the type used with the gun recovered from the scene of the shooting. About a year ago, Mr. Chapman had stolen a gun out of a car in Newport News, Va., court documents said, and days before the shooting at Old Dominion, he sold the gun to Mr. Jalloh for $100.
Mr. Chapman, 32, had previously been investigated by the authorities for illegally purchasing firearms for other people but had not been convicted of a felony. In 2021, Mr. Chapman bought three guns that were later used to commit crimes, including a homicide, the affidavit said.
Mr. Chapman told investigators that Mr. Jalloh told him he needed the gun for protection as a delivery driver, according to the affidavit, and that he did not know Mr. Jalloh had planned to carry out the attack. He added that he had known that Mr. Jalloh had been incarcerated but not that he was a felon.
According to cellphone location data outlined in court records, Mr. Jalloh’s phone was near Mr. Chapman’s home, about 30 miles northwest of Old Dominion’s campus, on the evening before the shooting. The phone stayed there until around 9 a.m. the next day, the records said.
Detectives at Old Dominion saw Mr. Jalloh exit a Nissan Altima at about 9:40 a.m. on Thursday, an hour before the attack. The car, which Mr. Jalloh is thought to have rented through the car-sharing platform Turo this month, was parked next to the Islamic Center.
License plate readers had captured the car driving to the university campus on March 5 and March 11.
Pooja Salhotra covers breaking news across the United States.
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