'I wouldn't be here': Cadets pay tribute to officer who died stopping Old Dominion shooter

Cadet Jah-Ire Urtarte had one sentence for the officer who stepped between him and a gunman inside Constant Hall: "If he didn't lunge at him, you know, I wouldn't be here right now."

That tribute, delivered in a 17-minute video posted by the Army ROTC on April 9, 2026, placed a human frame around an act of calculated bravery. Lt. Col. Brandon A. Shah, 42, the Professor of Military Science and Department Chair at Old Dominion University's Monarch Battalion, threw himself at Mohamed Bailor Jalloh the moment Jalloh reached into his waistbelt, shouted "Allahu Akbar," and opened fire on March 12 in Norfolk, Virginia. Shah was shot in the upper thigh; cadets fashioned a tourniquet from a belt. He did not survive.

Before that, the class assumed Jalloh was someone early for a later session. Cadet Samuel Reineberg noticed he sounded nervous. Jalloh asked whether it was the ROTC class; Shah nodded. Then came the gunfire. Cadet Wesley Myers and others wrestled Jalloh to the ground and stabbed him to death. When they finally got the handgun away from him, Myers said, the magazine was empty with one round still in the chamber. One cadet walked outside to flag down responding officers and guide them back to the wounded.

Shah's death closed a 23-year military career defined by danger willingly accepted. A Staunton, Virginia native and Charlottesville High School graduate, he enlisted in 2003, earned his commission after graduating from ODU in 2007 with a sociology degree, and later completed a Master of Science in Engineering Management from the University of Kansas. As an AH-64 Apache pilot, he logged more than 1,200 flight hours and over 600 combat hours across deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and eastern Europe. He returned to ODU in 2022 to lead the Monarch Battalion, overseeing a nearly 50% increase in ROTC enrollment within his first year.

The man who killed him had a documented record of violent intent that federal systems failed to contain. Jalloh, 36, a former Virginia Army National Guard member, pleaded guilty in 2016 to attempting to provide material support to ISIS and was sentenced to 11 years in prison plus five years of supervised release. Despite that terrorism conviction, which should have disqualified him from early release, Jalloh walked out of federal custody on December 23, 2024, approximately 2.5 years early, after completing a drug treatment program. At the time of the attack, he was on supervised release set to run until 2029 and was enrolled in online classes at ODU.

The weapon itself traced a separate failure. Federal prosecutors charged Kenya Mechell Chapman, 32, of Smithfield, Virginia, with selling Jalloh a stolen handgun for approximately $100 about one week before the shooting. Jalloh told Chapman he needed it for protection as a delivery driver. The ATF assisted in the firearms investigation.

FBI Norfolk Special Agent in Charge Dominique Evans confirmed the attack is being investigated as terrorism. ODU President Brian Hemphill credited the cadets with preventing greater casualties, citing their "bravery and courage." Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger called Shah a devoted instructor who "didn't just lead a life of service to our country, he taught and led others to follow that path." A memorial at S.B. Ballard Stadium on ODU's campus included a 21-gun salute.

The round still in Jalloh's chamber when the cadets disarmed him is a stark measure of how close the toll could have been, and how many institutional failures converged to put it there.