Old Dominion University Shooter Reportedly Had Prison Sentence for Aiding ISIS Cut Short

Mohamed Jalloh, a former U.S. service member and naturalized citizen from Sierra Leone who shot and killed one person and injured two others at Virginia’s Old Dominion University on Thursday, was reportedly released by President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice in 2024 after being sentenced in 2017 to 11 years in prison for aiding ISIS.

According to media reports, Jalloh was accused by federal prosecutors of sending money to aspiring ISIS fighters and attempting to help the terror group acquire weapons that he believed would be used in an attack on U.S. soil.

Prosecutors under President Donald Trump’s administration had originally sought a 20-year sentence for Jalloh.

“By putting the idea of this murder plot into religious terms, and by suggesting that murdering members of the U.S. military would be a path to heaven, the defendant showed how strongly committed he was to the deadly ideology,” prosecutors stated at the time, as reported by The Associated Press.

However, Judge Liam O’Grady of the Eastern District Court of Virginia, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, sentenced him to 11 years in prison, the AP reported.

Media reports noted that the judge’s sentence came after the defense claimed that Jalloh had renounced his ISIS aspirations.

“I feel like a complete idiot for accepting such a superficial and dishonest interpretation of Islam,” Jalloh wrote in a letter to the court, as reported by the New York Post.

Jalloh was released from his sentence four years early in December of 2024, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons records reported by the Post.

FBI Director Kash Patel announced Thursday that the bureau would investigate the shooting as an act of terrorism.