The Justice Department on Friday charged Kenya Chapman in connection with the sale of the firearm used by Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, the convicted ISIS sympathizer who opened fire in a classroom at Old Dominion University on Thursday, killing one person and injuring two others.

ABC7 reported that Jalloh, a former Army National Guard member and naturalized U.S. citizen from Sierra Leone, shouted "Allahu akbar" before opening fire in the university's business school building.

He was subdued and killed by ROTC students before the police even arrived. Less than ten minutes passed between the initial call to officers and responders confirming the shooter was dead.

The man he murdered was Lt. Col. Brandon Shah, a 42-year-old ROTC leader and professor of military science at ODU who had piloted helicopters over Iraq, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe during his Army career.

The gun, the seller, and the questions that follow

According to a federal affidavit, Chapman told agents he stole the gun from a car in Newport News, Virginia, about a year before the shooting and recently sold it to Jalloh. Chapman said he met Jalloh at work and that Jalloh told him he needed the weapon for protection as a delivery driver.

Chapman claimed he had no idea Jalloh had a previous felony conviction and denied knowing the man would commit the attack. An anonymous law enforcement official described the weapon as having an obliterated serial number.

So a stolen gun with a destroyed serial number ended up in the hands of a man who had already pleaded guilty to attempting to aid the Islamic State. Chapman now faces federal charges. The specific charges were not detailed in the Department's announcement.

A terrorist released early

This is where the story shifts from tragedy to systemic failure.

Jalloh pleaded guilty in 2016 to attempting to aid the Islamic State extremist group. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was released from federal custody in December 2024, roughly two and a half years early, and was on supervised release at the time of the shooting.

A person familiar with the matter indicated Jalloh benefited from a program that allows inmates to shave up to a year off their sentences, though it wasn't clear how he qualified for it. A message seeking information about his incarceration and release was left with the federal Bureau of Prisons.

Read that sequence again. A man who tried to materially support the Islamic State received an 11-year sentence, walked free years ahead of schedule through a murky early-release mechanism, and within months carried out exactly the kind of attack his original conviction should have warned every agency in the federal government he was capable of committing.

Supervised release is not supervision if the person you're supervising acquires a stolen firearm with an obliterated serial number and walks into a classroom shouting "Allahu akbar."

Whatever system was supposed to monitor Jalloh after December 2024 did not work. Someone approved his early release. Someone was responsible for tracking him. Those people have not been identified, and those questions have not been answered.

The heroes who stopped it

What prevented a far worse massacre was not the federal government, not the supervised release apparatus, and not any early warning system. It was ROTC students in the room.

Three members of the U.S. Army ROTC program were injured, including Shah, who died. The students subdued and killed Jalloh. F

BI officials praised their bravery for preventing further harm. Dominique Evans, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Norfolk field office, noted the students did not shoot Jalloh. Authorities have not said exactly how the ROTC students killed him.

These were young men and women training to serve their country who, without weapons, stopped a terrorist attack in progress. They did in seconds what the federal criminal justice system failed to do across years.

A soldier, a teacher, a protector

Brandon Shah first attended Old Dominion as an ROTC student. He returned in 2022 as a leader of the program that shaped him. Old Dominion President Brian Hemphill wrote a message to the university community on Friday:

"Above all else, Lt. Col. Shah embodied what it means to be a devoted family man, a revered leader, and heroic protector even in his final moments."

His close friend Eddie Flack visited campus Friday morning and poured out a bottle of Wild Turkey on the lawn. He and Shah had become friends while enrolled at ODU together.

"I love you Brandon. Rest well with the creator. I love you."

"We need to spread more love and not this hatred."

Shah survived combat deployments across three theaters of war. He came home to teach the next generation. He was killed by a man the federal government already knew was a threat and chose to release early anyway.

The broader threat isn't theoretical

This attack did not occur in a vacuum. The FBI has warned that Iranian operatives may be planning drone attacks on targets in California.

Two men recently brought explosives in what the FBI called a "targeted act of violence against the Jewish community" in the Detroit area. The U.S. and Israel launched a war with Iran with missile strikes on February 28.

When a reporter asked Evans whether there was any mention of the ongoing war with Iran in connection to Jalloh's attack, Evans responded flatly: "None whatsoever."

Perhaps not directly. But the question of whether the federal government is adequately tracking known extremists during a period of escalating conflict answers itself when a convicted ISIS supporter walks out of prison early and commits a terrorist attack on American soil within months.

What accountability looks like

The Chapman charge is a start, not an answer. The deeper failures here are institutional:

• A convicted terrorism supporter was released approximately two and a half years before his sentence was complete.
• The mechanism that enabled his early release remains unexplained.
• His supervised release failed to detect or prevent the acquisition of a stolen, serial-number-defaced firearm.
• No public accounting has been offered for who approved the early release or what monitoring was in place.

Every one of those failures preceded the moment Kenya Chapman sold a stolen gun to a terrorist. Every one of them was within the federal government's control.

Brandon Shah's students finished what the system should never have allowed to start.