Slain Troops in Chattanooga Saved Lives Before Giving Their Own

NYTImes:

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Marines and sailors risked their lives for one another in Chattanooga last week, trying to distract the gunman who assaulted a naval center, helping people scale a fence for safety and returning fire at the attacker, law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

Some of the five servicemen who were fatally wounded effectively sacrificed themselves during the assault on Thursday, diverting the gunman from a larger group of potential victims, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation into the killings.

“This could have been a lot worse,” said the official, who did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation. “It could have been a horrible, horrible massacre — so much worse.”

At a news conference here, the F.B.I. confirmed that at least one service member shot at the attacker, but did not say whether he had managed to wound the gunman, Mohammod Abdulazeez, who was killed minutes later in a shootout with the Chattanooga police.

“A service member from inside the facility observed him and opened fire on him, firing several rounds at him,” said Edward W. Reinhold, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Knoxville office. Two guns belonging to service members were recovered from the scene, he said, and “at least one of those weapons had been discharged.”

Mr. Abdulazeez had written about the submission to God demanded by Islam, about martyrdom and suicide, and about seeing the world as a dark and painful place.

Investigators are trying to determine if he came into contact with extremists who might have radicalized him, inspiring or even directing his attack. But Mr. Reinhold cautioned on Wednesday that it was too early to answer such questions, saying that agents were pursuing nearly 400 leads in the case.

“At this point we’re treating him as a homegrown violent extremist,” he said.

That language is appropriate for someone like Dylann Roof, but someone like Abdulazeez should be labeled a jihadist. The government is deliberately blurring categories.

“We do not have any indication that anyone else was assisting him that day,” he added, but he did not address the possibility of prior help.