CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — The FBI says it is treating the Chattanooga gunman as a “homegrown violent extremist” and that it is too early to determine if he had been radicalized.
Ed Reinhold, the FBI’s special agent in charge in Knoxville, said during a news conference Wednesday that investigators were still looking into whether Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez had been radicalized.
Reinhold says authorities believe Abdulazeez acted alone, without the assistance of anyone else when he attacked two military sites in Tennessee on Thursday.
Four Marines and a sailor were killed in the attack.
A military official says several troops “ran back into the fight” after getting their colleagues to safety during the attack.
Maj. Gen. Paul W. Brier, commanding general of the 4th Marine Division, said during a news conference Wednesday in Chattanooga that there were 20 Marines and two Navy corpsman inspecting equipment at a joint Marine-Navy facility when the attack happened on Thursday.
Brier says the troops “reacted the way you would expect” during an attack, rapidly going room to room to get others to safety. They had just returned from a training exercise in California.
He says once they got to safety, several ran back into the fight. Brier would not provide further details about what happened.
The gunman, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, died after a gunfight with police.
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