The Chattanooga shootings are still the hot topic of conversation all across the United States. Everyone wants to know if this was another foreign terrorist attack within the United States, especially if it was carried out by ISIS?
After Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez sprayed bullets into a military recruiting center and a Naval reserve center in Chattanooga, he was killed by police. He won’t be telling any tales. But some news outlets ran with a story that scared many Americans.
“We’re taking a hard look at a Twitter account — an ISIS-linked Twitter account — that seemed to have foreknowledge of the shooting in Chattanooga,” Catherine Herridge, Fox News chief intelligence correspondent told viewers. “The tweet went out at 10:34 with the hashtag Chattanooga referring to American dogs and a likely shooting. This, of course, was about 15 minutes before the shooting took place,” she added.
That has now been cleared up. Whoever saw the tweet and reported it was viewing it in Pacific Time Zone, which made it look like it had been sent before the Chattanooga shootings.
Reporting of ISIS tweet is inaccurate. Tweet is time stamped 10:34 *PT* (1:34 ET). 2 hrs after the event.
#CHAshooti… pic.twitter.com/KDE8o0cMj9
— Rob Bettis (@robbettis) July 16, 2015
The FBI special agent in charge has said they “have not determined whether it was an act of terrorism or whether it was a criminal act.”
“We are looking at every possible avenue, whether it was terrorism — whether it was domestic, international — or whether it was a simple, criminal act,” Special Agent Ed Reinhold continued. “We will treat this as a terrorism investigation until it can be determined that it is not.”
“We take all shootings very seriously. Obviously when you have an attack on a U.S. military facility, then we have to make sure that we have all the information necessary to make an assessment in terms of how this attack took place and what further precautions we can take in the future,” he said.
Since then, politicians have been making their opinions known about whether ISIS was involved in the Chattanooga shootings.
U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said on Friday that he was convinced the Chattanooga shootings were from ISIS.
“If it can happen in Chattanooga, Tennessee, it can happen anywhere. The stats prove this. Over the last year, we’ve had over 60 ISIS-related arrests in the United States,” he said.
“What keeps me up at night is the one case we don’t know about it, because we do know about a lot of the plots. We do know a lot about the individuals and the communications going on in the United States, but this one we did not,” he said.
McCaul further warned, “I don’t know how many more of these could happen, but I can tell you there are ISIS investigations in all 50 states.”
At this point, the FBI has not said whether they have determined if ISIS was involved in the Chattanooga shootings. So Americans wait.
The idea #Charleston shooter inspired by #ConfederateFlag but #Chattanooga shooter wasn't inspired by ISIS is as offensive as it is ignorant
— Sam Burnham (@C_SamBurnham) July 18, 2015