U.S. shooter kills 4 Marines

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. -- A gunman unleashed a barrage of gunfire at two military facilities a few miles apart in Chattanooga on Thursday, killing four Marines and injuring three people, officials said. The attacker also was killed.

Federal authorities said they were investigating the possibility that it was an act of terrorism, and the FBI took charge of the case.

Authorities identified the gunman as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, 24, of Hixson, Tenn. The correct spelling of his name was still in dispute, with federal officials and records giving at least four variations.

The shootings began Thursday morning at a military recruiting center on Lee Highway and ended about 30 minutes later at a Navy and Marine reserve center on Amnicola Highway, officials said. The gunman fired a barrage of bullets at both sites, authorities and witnesses said. Both attacks were over within a half-hour.

"Today was a nightmare for the city of Chattanooga," Mayor Andy Berke said.

In Washington, President Barack Obama pledged a prompt and thorough investigation, and said the White House had been in touch with the Pentagon to make sure military installations are being vigilant. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson also raised security at some federal facilities as a cautionary measure after the shootings.

"We take all shootings very seriously, but obviously when we have an attack on a U.S. military facility, we have to make sure we have all the information necessary to make an assessment of how this attack took place," Obama said in the Oval Office after being briefed on the shootings by FBI Director James Comey.

Within hours of the bloodshed, law enforcement officers with guns drawn swarmed a house in Hixson, and two women were led away in handcuffs. But officials said late Thursday that no one was in custody.

When asked about potential accomplices, FBI agent Edward Reinhold said at a news conference, "There is no indication at this point that anybody else was involved."

Authorities would not immediately say how the gunman died. Reinhold said Abdulazeez had "numerous weapons," but Reinhold would not give more details.

Four Marines were killed in the shooting at the reserve center, the Marine Corps said. A Navy sailor who was with them was seriously wounded, according to two U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

In addition, a Marine was wounded in the leg but was not seriously hurt, and a police officer was shot in the ankle, Berke said. Chattanooga police officer Dennis Pedigo was listed in stable condition, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported.

The newspaper reported that the Erlanger Medical Center in Chattanooga, where some of the victims were taken, was put on lockdown after the shootings, along with some businesses near the shooting sites. Police officers with high-powered rifles guarded the hospital door and ordered the news media to stay across the street, the newspaper reported.

The names of the dead were not immediately released.

"This is a sad day for the United States," William Killian, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, said at a news conference. "These service members served their country with pride, and they have been the victims of these shootings."

Killian said the shootings were being treated as an act of domestic terrorism, but he later backed away from that label.

U.S. officials have expressed increasing concern that Islamic State and other extremist groups are inspiring homegrown extremists to launch attacks. Such attacks are difficult to stop because the extremists aren't directed by the terror groups, U.S. officials have said.

Reinhold said authorities will investigate the shooter's motive to determine whether terror was his intent. He said hundreds of agents would be involved in the investigation by the end of Thursday. He said of the attack, "we have no indication that it's tied to anything at this point."

Law enforcement officials said Abdulazeez had not been under previous investigation by the FBI. Public records indicate that he had no criminal history aside from vehicle-related offenses, including an arrest on a charge of driving under the influence in April.

However, law enforcement officials said Abdulazeez's father, Youssef, had been under investigation several years ago over possible ties to a foreign terrorist organization.

One official said the father at one point was on a terrorism watch list and was questioned while on a trip abroad but that he was eventually removed from the list. The official said the investigation of the father was old and did not generate any information on the son.

One attack, then two

The shootings began at the recruiting center on Lee Highway on Thursday morning. A shot rang out around 10:30 or 10:45 a.m., followed a few seconds later by more gunfire, said Sgt. 1st Class Robert Dodge, leader of Army recruiting at the center.

He and his comrades dropped to the ground and barricaded themselves in a safe place. Dodge estimated that there were 30-50 shots fired. Doors and glass were damaged at the neighboring Air Force, Navy and Marine offices, he said.

Law enforcement officials said the gunman stopped his car in front of the recruiting station, shot at the building and drove off, said Brian Lepley, a spokesman with the U.S. Army Recruiting Command in Fort Knox, Ky.

Four Army recruiters were in the building at the time, Lepley said, adding that they were not injured and had been evacuated from the center.

Recruiting officers have been trained to react to threats since a 2009 shooting at a recruiting office in Little Rock, Lepley said.

U.S. Army Pvt. William "Andy" Long, 23, of Conway was shot and killed in the Little Rock attack, and Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, then 18, of Jacksonville was wounded. Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, who lived most of his life in Tennessee, is serving a life term in an Arkansas prison for the Little Rock shootings.

The Chattanooga recruiting center sits between a cellphone business and an Italian restaurant in a small strip of shops.

Yellow police tape restricted access to the area Thursday afternoon, but numerous bullet holes were visible in the building's plate glass. The bullet holes formed a roughly horizontal line, suggesting that the gunman sprayed bullets from one side to the other.

After the attack at the Lee Highway site, the gunman drove to the Navy and Marine reserve center on Amnicola Highway.

Officials said the police officer who was injured was pursuing Abdulazeez after the first shooting and engaged him at the scene of the second shooting. Other law enforcement officials swarmed the area, and witnesses said multiple shots were then fired.

After 1 p.m., city officials announced that the gunman had been killed.

The Navy and Marine reserve center is in an industrial area that includes a Coca-Cola bottling plant.

Marilyn Hutcheson, who works at Binswanger Glass across the street from the Navy and Marine center, said she heard a barrage of gunshots around 11 a.m.

"I couldn't even begin to tell you how many," she said. "It was rapid-fire, like pow-pow-pow-pow-pow, so quickly. The next thing I knew, there were police cars coming from every direction."

She ran inside, where she and other employees and a customer waited with the doors locked. The gunfire continued with occasional bursts for what she estimated was 20 minutes, she said. Bomb squads, special-weapons-and-tactics teams, and other local, state and federal authorities rushed to the scene.

Carolyn Taylor, another employee at Binswanger Glass, told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that the business was still locked down more than two hours after the shooting, and police took food in for the employees.

She said she heard scores of gunshots before city officials announced, about 1:15 p.m., that the "active shooter situation" had concluded. Of the gunshots, she said she heard "100, at least, because it was several at one time."

In addition to businesses near the shooting sites, Chattanooga State Community College in Chattanooga and Lee University in Cleveland, Tenn., went into lockdown after the shootings.

Also in Cleveland, about 30 miles from Chattanooga, Bradley Square Mall went into automatic shutdown after the shootings because of a Tennessee National Guard recruiting center in the building, said the mall's general manager, Stacia Crye-Shahan.

People at the recruiting center thought they heard shots and called 911, and police searched the building, she said.

"There's no evidence of shots fired, and no one was injured here, so we are very thankful for that," Crye-Shahan said.

As evening fell, vigils and makeshift memorials for the shooting victims popped up around the city, the Chattanooga Times Free Press reported.

A Marine who was mourning the loss of his comrades in arms told the newspaper that he likely knew the Marines who died. He trained with them at the operations center on Amnicola Highway and in Fort McClellan, Ala., he said.

"The fact that it happened, I've been tearing up all day. ... We have a tightknit group. We have a great bond," Arthur Shaylitsa said.

He told the newspaper that his unit had been warned to be on a "heightened state of alertness" earlier in the spring.

Maj. Paul Greenberg, a Marines spokesman, said Thursday, "We are working closely with the U.S. Navy, and local and federal law enforcement to determine exactly what happened today in Chattanooga."

In a statement Thursday, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus called the shootings "both devastating and senseless."

"While we expect our sailors and Marines to go into harm's way, and they do so without hesitation, an attack at home, in our community, is insidious and unfathomable," he said.

Information for this article was contributed by Michael Muskal, Christina Littlefield, Christine Mai-Duc and Julie Westfall of the Los Angeles Times; by Richard A. Serrano of Tribune News Service; by Lucas L. Johnson, Kathleen Foody, Ted Bridis, Travis Loller, Kristin M. Hall, Rebecca Reynolds Yonker, Claire Galofaro and staff members of The Associated Press; by Richard Fausset, Alan Blinder, Michael S. Schmidt, Matthew Rosenberg and Jess Bidgood of The New York Times; by Angela Greiling Keane and Del Quentin Wilber of Bloomberg News; by Adam Goldman, Greg Miller, Cari Gervin, Mark Berman, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Sari Horwitz, Carol D. Leonnig, Carol Morello, Jennifer Jenkins, Julie Tate and Alice Crites of The Washington Post; and by Nikki Wentling of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

A Section on 07/17/2015