Gunman at Old Dominion -- previously convicted of aiding terrorism -- was an active student at the university

John Buzbee, The Virginian-Pilot on Mar 13, 2026

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NORFOLK, Va. — Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, the man who on Thursday opened fire into an Old Dominion University classroom and killed its instructor while wounding two others, was a student enrolled at the university at the time of attack.

University spokesman Jonah Grinkewitz said Jalloh studied geography at ODU. He was a student from fall 2007 to 2013, intermittently, and reenrolled in the summer of 2025.

That was roughly six months after he was released from federal prison. In 2016, he pleaded guilty to offering material support to the terrorist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and sentenced to 11 years in prison and five years supervised release.

Jalloh was 36 years old and lived in Sterling, Va., according to a 2017 Justice Department press release cited by Grinkewitz. Jalloh reportedly praised another terrorist attack and unknowingly told an investigator he aspired to conduct a terrorist attack.

He was living in Northern Virginia at the time. In 2017, he was sentenced for providing support to the foreign terrorist organization. Jalloh was a former Army National Guardsman.

During the Thursday shooting at ODU, which is being investigated as an act of terror by the FBI, Jalloh shouted “Allahu akbar” as he began shooting at those inside the classroom — an ROTC class within Constant Hall. Minutes later, investigators said, he had been disarmed and killed by the students.

The instructor of the class who was killed in the shooting was a Virginia native and an ODU alumnus. He was identified as Lt. Col. Brandon Shah, head of the university’s Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program and a professor of military science.

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