Less than a month before the one-year of the anniversary of the Chattanooga terrorist attack that took the lives of five United States service members, the FBI announced Thursday that the shooter had been radicalized more than a year before the incident.
What took so long to reveal this information?
FBI officials didn't say but noted that the investigation is still ongoing. Releasing any more information still could be evidentiary if investigators could tie other people to the attack, they said.
Yet the same could said for any recent similar shooting, such as the following, where federal officials were quick to mention radicalization:
- Only days after a Nov. 5, 2009, attack at Fort Hood, Texas, federal officials were looking at the shooter's contacts with an Islamic cleric that might have contributed to his radicalization in a shooting spree which left 13 dead and injured more than 30 others.
- One day after a May 3, 2015, attack in Garland, Texas, FBI investigators said they believed both gunmen in the incident in which they opened fire at a community center had been radicalized while they lived in Phoenix.
- Less than a week after a Dec. 7, 2015, attack in San Bernadino, Calif., the FBI announced that the husband and wife terrorists in the attack that killed 14 and injured 21 had been radicalized.
- Just a day after the June 12 attack in an Orlando, Fla., nightclub, FBI Director James Comey said he was "highly confident" the gunman in the attack that killed 49 and injured more than 50 was radicalized.
In the July 16, 2015, Chattanooga shooting, the FBI also said it couldn't release dashcam video from the first police cars to respond to the shootings at the U.S. Naval and Marine Reserve Center on Amnicola Highway or transcripts from the 911 calls that day. The Times Free Press had filed open requests for those and other documents the month of the shooting but were denied.
But neither the dashcam video or the 911 calls would relate to another person who might be tied to the crime since no one knew who the shooter, Mohammad Abdulazeez, was at the time.
Nevertheless, it is edifying to learn a few more details about the incident that shattered the city on that summery morning.
The FBI revealed that Abdulazeez's guns all had been purchased legally, which closes the loop to the agency's statements a day after the shooting that "some" of the guns had been purchased legally. The agency also said he had planned the attack deliberately and intended to die, that he had no medical evidence of depression (as suggested by his family) and that one of his three guns malfunctioned early on, which might have saved lives.
So, while we have a little more knowledge today about the shooting, the FBI's unusually long time in calling the shooter "radicalized" and its reticence to release certain information leads us to believe there is more to learn. We hope one day we can have the full picture of what happened.
