From ordinary kid to killer

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - Hailey Bureau still recalls the quote her high school classmate Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez selected for his yearbook photo: "My name causes national security alerts. What does yours do?"

Abdulazeez was apparently borrowing a wisecrack from a well-known American Muslim blogger, and Bureau said it was considered a joke at the time.

"Now, it's very morbid," she said, a day after the 24-year-old Kuwait-born Abdulazeez opened fire on two U.S. military sites in Chattanooga in an attack that left four Marines dead.

A picture emerged Friday of Abdulazeez as a likable, outgoing young man who enjoyed a laugh, made the wrestling team, and seemed "as Americanized as anyone else," yet was clearly aware of what set him apart at his Chattanooga high school.

What's not clear - to counterterrorism investigators and to neighbors and former classmates - is what set him on the path to violence that ended with him being gunned down by police.

Abdulazeez did not appear to have been on federal authorities' radar before the bloodshed Thursday, officials said. But now counterterrorism investigators are taking a deep look at his online activities and foreign travel, searching for clues to his political contacts or influences.

"It would be premature to speculate on exactly why the shooter did what he did," FBI agent Ed Reinhold said. "However, we are conducting a thorough investigation to determine whether this person acted alone or was inspired or directed."

In the quiet neighborhood in Hixson, Tenn., where Abdulazeez lived with his parents in a two-story home, residents and former classmates sketched a picture of an utterly ordinary suburban existence.

"It's kind of a general consensus from people that interacted with him that he was just your average citizen there in the neighborhood. There was no reason to suspect anything otherwise," said Ken Smith, a city councilman.

As ordinary as the Abdulazeez family appeared on the outside, court documents allege it was an abusive, turbulent household.

Abdulazeez's mother, Rasmia Ibrahim Abdulazeez, filed a divorce complaint in 2009 accusing her husband, Youssuf Saed Abdulazeez, of beating her repeatedly in front of their children and sexually assaulting her. She also accused him of "striking and berating" the children without provocation.

Weeks later, the couple agreed to reconcile, with the father consenting to go to counseling.

Abdulazeez graduated from Red Bank High School in Chattanooga, where he was on the wrestling team. A fellow graduate, Hussnain Javid, said Abdulazeez was "very outgoing."

"Obviously something has happened since then," said Sam Plank, who graduated two years ahead of Abdulazeez but hadn't crossed paths with him since 2006. "He was as Americanized as anyone else. At least that's what it seemed like to me."

Abdulazeez got an engineering degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2012 and worked as an intern a few years ago at the Tennessee Valley Authority, the federally owned utility that operates power plants and dams across the South.

He was conditionally hired as an engineer at the Perry nuclear power plant near Cleveland and spent 10 days there before he was let go in May 2013 because he failed a background check, said Todd Schneider, a FirstEnergy Corp. spokesman. Schneider would not say why he failed.

"He worked in an administrative building," Schneider said. "He was never allowed in the protected area of the plant near the reactor."

For the last three months, Abdulazeez had been working at Superior Essex Inc., which designs and makes wire and cable products.

In April, he was arrested on a drunken driving charge.

Javid said he occasionally saw Abdulazeez at the Islamic Society of Greater Chattanooga, but the last time was about a year ago.

The official Kuwait News Agency on Friday quoted the Interior Ministry as saying that while Abdulazeez was born in Kuwait, he was of Jordanian origin.

A U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke on condition of anonymity said that Abdulazeez was in Jordan last year for months, and that those travels and anyone he met with are being looked at as part of the terrorism investigation.

In recent months, U.S. counterterrorism authorities have been warning of the danger of attacks by individuals inspired but not necessarily directed by the Islamic State group.

But the FBI's Reinhold said Friday that so far, there is "no indication he was inspired by or directed by" ISIS or other groups.

The gunman on Thursday sprayed gunfire at a military recruiting center at a strip mall, then shot up a Navy-Marine training center a few miles away.

More details of the attack emerged Friday, with Reinhold saying Abdulazeez was armed with at least one handgun and two long guns - a rifle or a shotgun. Some of the weapons were bought legally, some may not have been, Reinhold said. The gunman was also wearing a vest designed to hold extra ammunition, Reinhold said.

The dead Marines were identified as Gunnery Sgt. Thomas J. Sullivan, 40, of Hampden, Mass.; Staff Sgt. David A. Wyatt, 35, of Burke, N.C.; Sgt. Carson A. Holmquist, 25, of Polk, Wis.; and Lance Cpl. Squire K. "Skip" Wells, 21, of Marietta, Ga. Sullivan, Wyatt, and Holmquist had served in either Iraq, Afghanistan, or both.

An unidentified sailor seriously wounded in the attack remained hospitalized.