Chattanooga shattered: A single gunshot, silence, and terror
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| Members of Teen Challenge, gather for a memorial service at River Park Saturday, July 18, 2015, in Chattanooga, Tenn., for the victims of the Tennessee shootings. Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, of Hixson, Tenn., attacked two military facilities on Thursday, in a shooting rampage that killed four Marines and one U.S. Navy sailor. |
CHATTANOOGA,
Tenn. (AP) -- A single "pop" cut through the quiet morning. Those
who heard it had a moment to ponder the noise.
On
this ordinary Thursday, some thought a car had backfired, or maybe a
tire had blown. Sgt. 1st Class Robert Dodge looked up from his computer
in an Army recruiting office in a strip mall, more curious than alarmed.
Then
a young man in a rented convertible re-aimed his rifle and unleashed a
frenzy of bullets. These were the opening shots in a single-handed
rampage against the military that seized this city for hours and
reignited American fears about radicalization and homegrown terror. The
shooter's motive remains a mystery.
Glass
shattered, televisions exploded, bullets whizzed past the heads of
servicemen at their desks and rooted in the walls behind them. In nearby
restaurants and hair salons and shops, people dived for cover or stood
paralyzed by fear.
Inside the five side-by-side recruiting offices, one for each branch of the military and the National Guard, no one panicked.
"They
were being soldiers," said Keith Wheatley, the property manager, a
Marine himself, who arrived moments after the attack. "That's part of
their job description. They know that any given time they could take
fire, that's what they do. They weren't crying or upset. They were just
trying to figure out what to do next."
Dodge
had taken command of the recruiting office near Chattanooga Metropolitan
Airport barely a month before. But after four tours in Iraq, he knew
the drill. As the bullets rocketed by, he hustled the others in his
office to a secure closet.
They emerged when
the firing subsided, amazed to find just one person shot in the leg,
unaware that the worst was far from over. They would soon learn from
arriving police officers that the man in the silver Mustang had made his
way across town to a Navy and Marine Reserve center and crashed the
gate.
Back at the recruiting center, they
waited for word outside their shattered storefront, emblazoned with the
seal of the U.S. Marine Corps: a bald eagle atop the Earth, clutching a
scroll in its beak that reads "Semper Fidelis." Always faithful.
Now seven jagged holes scarred the globe at its feet.
---
Seven
miles from the strip mall, Lance Cpl. Skip Wells swapped texts with his
girlfriend, Caroline Dove, 400 miles away at her home in Savannah,
Georgia. They had not seen each other for months, and she was planning a
visit for the following week.
"Can't wait
anymore," he typed Thursday morning from the Reserve center, tucked
between an industrial park and a leafy riverside park.
"Yes you can honey," she responded.
Around
the same time, hordes of Chattanooga police heading for the recruiting
offices heard the Mustang had been spotted, and changed course toward
the Reserve center.
The car pulled off the
highway, snaked around two concrete barriers meant to slow approaching
vehicles and punched through the green chain-link gate into the parking
lot.
The driver got out.
Officers who had tailed him there "immediately and aggressively" engaged him, Police Chief Fred Fletcher said.
In Savannah, a new message from Wells appeared on Dove's screen: "ACTIVE SHOOTER."
She thought he was joking.
---
The
gunman, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, lived with his parents in an
all-American suburb, with big houses and tidy lawns. Classmates
described the Kuwait-born 24-year-old as an affable young man who made
the Red Bank High School wrestling team and once offered a stranded
neighbor a ride home in the snow.
Investigators are trying to piece together where along the way he went wrong.
He struggled for years with depression, his family said in a statement Saturday.
"There
are no words to describe our shock, horror and grief," they wrote. "The
person who committed this horrible crime was not the son we knew and
loved."
Court records point to a volatile
family life. His mother filed for divorce in 2009 and accused her
husband of sexually assaulting her and abusing their children. She later
agreed to reconcile.
Abdulazeez, tall and
athletic, with an engineering degree from the University of Tennessee at
Chattanooga, worked for a short time at a nuclear power plant in Ohio.
Then a drug test tripped him up, a federal official briefed on the case
told The Associated Press, and the company let him go.
He
visited relatives in Jordan for several months last year, and when he
came back, he resumed attending services at a mosque. He kicked soccer
balls on his lawn and kept up with his friends, neighbors said.
Sometimes, he shot pellet guns off the back deck, aiming at a red target
hanging from a tree in the woods.
Friends who saw him in recent weeks told the AP they noticed nothing alarming.
On
a Monday morning in April, around 2 a.m., a Chattanooga police officer
pulled over a 14-year-old gray Toyota Camry. The driver, Abdulazeez, had
been swerving, speeding and stopping at green lights, according to the
police report. His eyes were droopy and watering; he slurred his speech
and mumbled. He smelled of alcohol and marijuana and had white powder
around his nostrils.
Abdulazeez told the officer that he had crushed up caffeine pills and snorted them. His court date was set for July 30.
That night, the police snapped a mug shot of the man with a crooked smile and a bushy beard.
---
Marilyn
Hutcheson was working at a glass company across the street from the
Reserve facility when, around 11 a.m., she heard a fusillade of
gunshots.
"I couldn't even begin to tell you
how many," she said. "It was rapid fire, like pow-pow-pow-pow, so
quickly. The next thing I knew there were police cars coming from every
direction."
A gunbattle erupted across the street.
Abdulazeez
carried at least three guns, the FBI said. He didn't wear body armor
but had on a vest designed to carry extra ammunition.
Investigators described him as a "moving target" and said he fired round after round at police.
Chattanooga
police officers swarmed the scene, Fletcher said, each armed with a
.45-caliber pistol and an AR-15 rifle. Some police brass rushed from
headquarters; officers at home off-duty threw on their uniforms and ran.
One of Abdulazeez's bullets tore into Officer Dennis Pedigo's ankle. His fellow officers dragged the fallen policeman to safety.
It
felt as if the firefight raged for 20 minutes, Hutcheson said. Business
owners along the industrial corridor threw their doors closed and
locked them. They huddled with employees and customers and people
passing by who fled for cover. They watched the news and peered out as
more police cars screamed down the street.
They
couldn't see much from the windows. The Reserve center is set back from
the street on the Tennessee River, in a valley and behind a row of
trees. Neighbors could only hear chaos.
"We're
apprehensive," Hutcheson said into the phone as the store remained
locked down. "Not knowing what transpired, if it was a grievance or
terroristic, we just don't know."
The area
inside the fences is about the size of two football fields, said Lance
Cpl. Austin Handle, who transferred from the facility last month. The
building sits in the middle, surrounded by a parking lot, with a
separate gated lot attached in the back where military vehicles are
stored. It's a small complex that draws little attention - the last
place Handle imagined ever seeing on the news.
Images
showed officers with their weapons drawn crouched behind police cars
and running from one car to the next. The area is mostly surrounded by
woods, and the officers appeared at times as though they weren't sure
where the gunfire was coming from. Along a jogging path that runs near
the Navy-Marine Reserve center, a sniper lay on the ground with his
rifle, peering through a scope. An officer knelt beside him, also ready
to fire.
On the front line, officers advanced as Abdulazeez rained bullets. They returned fire until he was dead.
"It
is apparent by looking at the crime scene ... that these officers were
under a tremendous amount of gunfire from this individual," FBI agent Ed
Reinhold said, "and yet they continued to move forward against this
target and engage him and eliminated that threat, saving numerous lives
throughout this community."
By the time it was
over, four decorated Marines and a sailor - three of whom survived
combat missions - and their attacker lay dead or dying.
Staff
Sgt. David Wyatt, from Burke County, North Carolina, called Marines his
brothers, friends said. The former Boy Scout enlisted in 2004 and was
deployed three times, twice to Iraq. Handle described him as a "man's
man," always quick with a joke.
Navy Petty
Officer 2nd Class Randall Smith, a father of three, was a reservist on
active duty in Chattanooga. He died at the hospital two days later.
Sgt.
Carson Holmquist enlisted in 2009, months after graduating from high
school in tiny Polk County, Wisconsin. He served two tours of duty.
Gunnery
Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, of Hampden, Massachusetts, had served for 18
years, including two tours in Iraq. He was a father figure to the
younger men, Handle said, tough but kind. He earned two Purple Hearts.
His death could earn him a third.
Lance Cpl.
Squire Wells, nicknamed Skip, came from a suburban Atlanta military
family: His grandfather was in the Air Force, and his grandmother and
mother were in the Navy. He loved flag football and American history and
hoped to become a drill sergeant. The other Marines made fun of him,
Handle said, because he was always so motivated, even during the most
excruciating drills.
Dove, Wells' girlfriend,
whom he had been texting in the moments before the murders, is on the
way to becoming a Marine herself, having signed up just months ago.
"I love you," she texted desperately after news of the attack reached her.
Hours passed. She called and called.
"Hon, I need you to answer me please," she wrote.
Silence.
