The Department of Justice charged Kenya Chapman in connection with the sale of a gun to Old Dominion University shooter Mohamed Jalloh, who yelled “Allahu akbar” while opening fire on a classroom at the Virginia school on Thursday.

Jalloh previously pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges for attempting to aid an Islamic State extremist group.

Chapman told authorities in an interview that he had previously stolen the gun in Newport News, Va., around a year ago. Chapman and Jalloh met through work when Jalloh told Chapman he needed a gun for protection while working as a delivery driver. Chapman admitted to knowing that Jalloh had a criminal record, but denied knowledge of Jalloh’s felony conviction.

He also told agents that he did not anticipate that Jalloh would carry out the attack, which left one dead and two injured.

Jalloh previously served eleven years in prison for the charges related to aiding Islamic terrorists. He was released from federal custody in December 2024 and placed on supervised release.

Jalloh was released two-and-a-half years early, upon completion of a drug treatment program, the Associated Press reported. It is unclear how Jalloh qualified for the program, which typically makes inmates eligible to decrease their sentence by one year, as inmates serving time for terrorism-related offenses are not typically eligible for these programs.

Jalloh was sentenced in 2017 after pleading guilty in October 2016 to providing materials to support a terrorist organization. He admitted to an undercover FBI agent that he intended to carry out an attack similar to the 2009 Fort Hood shootings. Jalloh had previously made contact with Islamic State members in Africa and tried to donate $500 to the group, but the funds were sent to an FBI-controlled account.

The Justice Department previously suggested a 20-year sentence for Jalloh, specifically because of his multiple attempts to join the Islamic State, as well as a previous attempt to buy an AR-15 to carry out an attack.

“The defendant was fully aware of what he was doing, and the consequences of those actions. His only misgivings seemed to be a fear that he would waver at the critical moment,” a sentencing memorandum reads. “By putting the idea of this murder plot into religious terms, and by suggesting that murdering members of the US military would be a path to heaven, the defendant showed how strongly committed he was to the deadly ideology” of the Islamic State.

During Thursday’s attack, Jalloh — a former Army National Guard member and naturalized citizen from Sierra Leone — killed an ROTC leader who worked as a professor of military science at ODU. The victim is Lieutenant Colonel Brandon Shah, a 42-year-old from Chesapeake.

Other ROTC students neutralized Jalloh, although it is not currently clear how they killed the suspect. Old Dominion University Police Chief Garrett Shelton said there were fewer than ten minutes between when authorities were aware of the attack and when they determined Jalloh was dead.

Dominique Evans, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Norfolk field office, said in a press conference on Thursday that there was no mention of the ongoing conflict with Iran in the Middle East in connection with the attack.