The Army ROTC cadets who subdued and killed the gunman in the Old Dominion University shooting have spoken publicly for the first time, describing the moment Mohamed Bailor Jalloh walked into their class on March 12 and opened fire. In a 17-minute video posted Wednesday night to the ROTC’s YouTube page, several cadets recounted the attack in Constant Hall that killed their instructor, Lt. Col. Brandon Shah, and injured two others.
Louis Ancheta said the class was having a normal day of presentations, while Oshea Bego said, “It was probably the one day we stayed the entire class period.” The room changed in seconds when Jalloh entered and asked if it was an ROTC class or a seminar. Samuel Reineberg said Jalloh sounded nervous, and a cadet answered that it was ROTC as Shah nodded. Wesley Myers said Jalloh then reached into his waistbelt, shouted “Allahu akbar” and began shooting toward Shah.
Most of the cadets dropped to the floor as soon as they heard gunshots. Some hid under desks. Ancheta said he pulled out a pocket knife and ran at Jalloh immediately. “With my pocket knife, I open it, I run up and as I’m running up, Colonel Shah lunges at the guy, and starts wrestling with him upright,” Ancheta said. He said Jalloh fired a stray shot over his shoulder and then shot him. “It really didn’t feel like it hit me. It felt like a graze. After that, I’m like I can keep on going,” he said. “I just go in there, I just start stabbing him.”
Jeremy Rawlinson said he saw one cadet jump over a table to help Ancheta and Shah. “I said to myself, ‘Well if he’s going, I gotta back him,’” Rawlinson said. Myers said several cadets then joined in, stabbing Jalloh, punching him and wrestling with his gun until Myers got it away and dropped an empty magazine. The cadets’ account gives the first public view from inside the room where the FBI called the attack a terrorist attack, and it also shows how quickly the class turned from a routine presentation day into a fight for survival.
One detail cuts through the rest. Ancheta said he earned a purple heart for what he did that day, a reminder that the attack on old dominion university left not only a dead shooter and a fallen instructor, but a classroom of students forced to act before anyone else could arrive. Their account leaves little doubt about the answer to the central question raised by the attack: the cadets stopped Jalloh themselves, and they did it in the room, within moments, while Shah was still trying to hold him upright.
