TLDR
Federal prosecutors have charged Virginia resident Kenya Chapman with allegedly providing the handgun used in a deadly Old Dominion University classroom shooting, drawing attention to earlier federal decisions not to prosecute him over suspected straw purchases.
A day after a gunman opened fire in a classroom at Old Dominion University in Virginia, killing one person and injuring two others, federal authorities turned to the gun’s path. Chapman is now accused of illegally supplying the weapon to the shooter, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh.
The case links a campus killing, a previously convicted terrorism supporter on supervised release, and a gun seller who had already drawn ATF scrutiny years earlier. Court records described in Fox News reporting show how those threads intersected, but they do not yet answer why earlier interventions stopped where they did.
Alleged Straw Purchase After Earlier ATF Scrutiny
According to a federal criminal complaint summarized by Fox News, Chapman is charged with making false statements related to selling a firearm to a convicted felon. An FBI affidavit alleges Chapman stole a .22-caliber handgun about a year before the shooting, then sold it to Jalloh for $100 shortly before the attack.
The same affidavit states that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives investigated Chapman in 2021 over three alleged straw purchases. All three guns were later recovered at crime scenes, including one homicide, according to court documents. The Justice Department, under the Biden administration, declined prosecution in that earlier matter and directed ATF to issue a warning letter instead. Chapman allegedly admitted to selling the guns and wrote a letter of apology, but no charges followed at that time.
Terrorism Conviction, Early Release, and Supervision
Jalloh, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Sierra Leone and a former Virginia National Guard combat engineer, had already been on federal radar for years. In 2016, he pleaded guilty to providing material support to the Islamic State, and in 2017, he received an 11-year prison sentence with credit for time served, plus five years of supervised release.
According to Fox News, Jalloh was released early in December 2024 after completing a federal drug treatment program that can reduce sentences by up to a year, even though terrorism-related offenders are generally not eligible for such early release programs. He remained on supervised release when, authorities say, he returned to violence at Old Dominion University. The FBI has said it is investigating the campus shooting as a terrorism case.
Overlapping Federal Roles and Unanswered Questions
Court filings and federal statements described in Fox News reporting show overlapping responsibilities among ATF investigators, Justice Department charging officials, and probation authorities overseeing Jalloh’s supervised release. The 2021 straw purchase investigation into Chapman ended with administrative action, not criminal charges, even after crime-gun recoveries were documented.
Separately, Jalloh’s case moved from a terrorism conviction and stated rejection of extremism to an attack now under federal terrorism review. Before his 2017 sentencing, he wrote, “I reject and deplore terrorism and any groups associated with it, especially ISIL,” telling the court he felt manipulated by extremist propaganda. The later shooting at Old Dominion now places that letter, and the judgments that followed it, under renewed scrutiny.
Chapman is presumed innocent unless and until he is proven guilty in court, and no trial date has been publicly detailed in the reporting cited. As the federal case proceeds, additional filings may clarify how prior investigative decisions, supervision practices, and alleged straw purchasing combined to put a stolen handgun in a university classroom.
