Service Member Opened Fire on Chattanooga Gunman: FBI

The FBI said a military service member opened fire on the Chattanooga, Tennessee, gunman after he crashed through the gates of a military facility there.

Ed Reinhold, the FBI's special agent in charge in Knoxville, said during a news conference Wednesday that a service member fired at the shooter after he crashed his rented, silver Mustang convertible through the gates of a joint Marine-Navy facility.

Reinhold says the gunman, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, went inside the building and shot a service member. He then made his way through the building and continued shooting. Abdulazeez went out the back, and then shot and killed two more people before Chattanooga police opened fire on him.

Earlier during the news conference, a military official said several troops "ran back into the fight" after getting their colleagues to safety during an attack in Chattanooga that left four Marines and a sailor dead, including Sgt. Marine Thomas J. Sullivan of Springfield, Massachusetts.

Maj. Gen. Paul W. Brier, commanding general of the 4th Marine Division, said there were 20 Marines and two Navy corpsman inspecting equipment at a joint Marine-Navy facility when the attack happened on Thursday.

Brier said 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 died after a gunfight with police. Reinhold said the shooter is being treated as a "homegrown violent extremist," but it's too early to say whether Abdulazeez had been "radicalized" before attacks.
 

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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