Shooter Spent 7 Months Overseas Last Year

But whether his visit to Jordan means anything remains unclear
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 17, 2015 5:37 PM CDT
Shooter Spent 7 Months Overseas Last Year
This April 2015 booking photo released by the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office shows Mohammad Youssduf Adbulazeer.   (Hamilton County Sheriffs Office via AP)

Authorities looking into the life of Chattanooga shooter Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez haven't turned up any ties to terror groups, but they're taking a close look at a seven-month visit he paid to Jordan last year, reports the New York Times. Abdulazeez, a naturalized US citizen, had relatives in the country and had made the trip at least four times previously over the years. He had also visited Kuwait. “He’d take off for a month or two mostly during his college breaks,” a high school friend tells the Washington Post. But if those trips radicalized him, nobody seemed to know about it. "Muhammad was always happy go lucky,” says the friend.

The Tennessean reports that Abdulazeez, who had an engineering degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, had been working the last three months as a shift supervisor at a local tech company called Superior Essex Inc. Aside from his calling in sick the last few days he was supposed to work, he showed no signs of trouble there. The first hint of it appears to have come in a blog post just days ago in which he described life as "short and bitter" and urged submission to Allah. There's still no confirmation on how Abdulazeez died, but the FBI says evidence suggests the 24-year-old was killed by police bullets and did not take his own life, reports CNN. He had two long guns, one handgun, and a "load-bearing vest" that allowed him to carry extra ammunition. (More Chattanooga stories.)

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