chatanooga praying with this now dead suspect. he said he was absolutely fine. he says that everything we heard about the kid, great, all-american kid, polite devout muslim certainly not showing signs of radicalism in any way, shape, form. he did mention though that a couple of years ago he thought that the suspect went overseas for a time. and says you know if it was anywhere he might have been radicalized it could have been during that trip. certainly, this is again the the member of the muslim community here saying he wasn t radicalized here in chattanooga. think it s fair to pin the out.oint out he was a practicing muslim. of until a month ago. practicing in one of the big mosques. trip overseas. first we are hearing of that. drew, you spoke to a different
he is the one in the camouflage pants. the one with hair right now. want to make dlerclear, an all american kid, the coach never would have suspected. that s right. a good student. a good wrestler in high school. and a good fighter. with this mixed martial arts training that he did. he was also apparently a good muslim practicing muslim who often at 6:00 at night at the gym, john would lay down his prayer rug in the coach s office and say his prayers. and then come out and continue training. as we have seen in so many cases, where and when it snapped. we don t know yet. at this time everybody is just shaking their head saying this was a nice kid from a nice family. he was as american as anybody else. all right, drew griffin. thank you so much for that. appreciate it. president obama this afternoon expressed condolences for the fallen marines, four marines shot dead. he is calling the shooting heartbreaking and promised a prompt and thorough investigation. as we mentioned federal
cnn s senior investigative correspondent drew griffin has been digging into his past. there are new information coming in, what are your learning? reporter: we keep learning blt overseas travel. that fbi said they are very interested in this person s travels over especially in jordan who did he contact, where. we also just heard from a very long time friend of muhammad abdulazeez. and he is telling us something happened overseas that when abdulazeez came back he distanced himself. he became a different type of person. there was some kind of a change going on there. so it s obviously something that the investigative threads are leading to as to what could have changed this person from what we were talking about yesterday, this all american kid who grew up in a nice neighborhood in chattanooga. went to high school college. had everything going for him.
a navy operation center where he opened fire. the gunman eventually killed in that fire fight. mohammad youssuf abdulazeez was a chattanooga grad and a trained mixed mixed martial artist and devout muslim. his radicalization not obvious to those who knew him. his demeanor there was absolutely nothing on him that would show me that he was upset about something. and i know that he moved out of the country a year or two ago. he went back home and stayed overseas. i asked his dad, where is mohammad? he said he moved back home. i saw him a couple of times when he visited. now, i m not the one to speculate but what happens overseas in certain different environments i don t know. he seemed like the all-american kid. you know never loud never boisterous, never got out of line a hard worker. he seemed to enjoy the training
is where a lone gunman launched an assault on two military facilities. four marines were killed and three wounded. the shooter was shot and killed by local police. the gunman is identified as 24-year-old mohammad youssuf abdulazeez. law enforcement officials tell cnn he was born in kuwait and had jordanian citizenship but was a naturalized u.s. citizen. friends say he visited the middle east several years ago, but officials say his name has never appeared on any terror watch list and found nothing to tie him to an a international terrorist organization. we have heard from a lot of people who knew the gunman including a former classmate who told our am ra walker that she would have never expected him to do something like that. he always, always had a smile on his face. he just he never seemed like the type of kid who would do something this heinous. it is incredible. popular, witty, all-american kid