NEW YORK (AP) — A man who opened fire in a classroom at Virginia’s Old Dominion University was granted early release from federal prison in 2024 after completing a drug treatment program, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. The person was not authorized to speak publicly and did so on the condition of anonymity.
Mohamed Bailor Jalloh was sentenced to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty in 2017 to providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, the Islamic State group, and was released about 2½ years early, according to prison records.
It wasn’t clear how Jalloh qualified for a prison drug treatment program, which allows inmates to shave up to a year off their sentences. Inmates serving sentences for terrorism-related offenses typically aren’t eligible for such programs or other sentence-reducing credits.
Jalloh, a former Virginia Army National Guard member who authorities said was taking online classes at the university, killed one person and injured two other people in Thursday’s shooting. ROTC students subdued and killed him.
A message seeking information about Jalloh’s incarceration and release was left with the federal Bureau of Prisons.
Some elected officials questioned how someone with known ties to the Islamic State group was able to carry out such an attack.
“The horrific tragedy that occurred today on ODU’s campus never should have happened,” U.S. Rep. Jen Kiggans, who represents the congressional district neighboring the university, wrote on Facebook.
Jalloh was transferred from a prison facility to a residential reentry center, or halfway house, in August 2024 and was released from federal custody on Dec. 23, 2024, according to court records.
He was on probation, known as supervised release in the federal system, when he attacked Old Dominion on Thursday. Based on his release date, that would’ve run into 2029.
A probation officer visited Jalloh’s Sterling, Virginia, home every six months and was last there in November, according to a law enforcement affidavit filed Friday against a man charged with supplying a gun to Jalloh.
Confessions to undercover agents
Jalloh’s October 2016 plea came after a three-month sting operation in which he, then 26, confessed to an undercover FBI agent that he was thinking about carrying out an attack similar to the 2009 shootings at Fort Hood, which left 13 people dead. Authorities launched the 2016 operation after Jalloh made contact with members of the Islamic State group in Africa earlier that year.
Jalloh later told the informant that the Islamic State group had asked if he wanted to participate in an attack. He tried to donate $500 to the group, but the money actually went to an account controlled by the FBI, according to court documents.
Jalloh then tried to buy an AR-15 assault rifle from a Virginia gun store but was turned away because he lacked the proper paperwork. The affidavit says he returned the next day and bought a different assault rifle. Prosecutors said the rifle was rendered inoperable before Jalloh left the store, unbeknownst to Jalloh. He was arrested the following day.
Debate over sentencing
The Justice Department in 2017 requested a 20-year prison sentence for Jalloh, noting that he had made multiple attempts to join the Islamic State group and had attempted to acquire a gun to carry out a murder plot.
“The defendant was fully aware of what he was doing, and the consequences of those actions. His only misgivings seemed to be a fear that he would waver at the critical moment,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
They added: “By putting the idea of this murder plot into religious terms, and by suggesting that murdering members of the US military would be a path to heaven, the defendant showed how strongly committed he was to the deadly ideology” of the Islamic State group.
