Michigan synagogue attacker killed by self-shot
The suspect who tried to break into a synagogue with his vehicle and set it on fire in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, has died from a gunshot wound to the head, an FBI official said at a news conference Friday.
US media reported that the attacker, 42-year-old Ayman Mohammed Ghazali, who was born in Lebanon, recently lost members of his family in an Israeli raid in Lebanon during the war in the Middle East.
But Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit field office, told the press that it would be irresponsible to speculate at this point about the motive for Thursday’s attack.
The statement added that Ghazali has no previous criminal record and no registered weapons.
The New York Times reported Friday that an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon on March 5th killed Ghazali’s brother, Ibrahim, and two young children, as well as his other brother, Qassem.
“The FBI has no indication that this attack is related to the shooting at Old Dominion University in Virginia” on Thursday that killed one person and wounded two others, Runyan said.
Runyan said Ghazali drove his Ford F150 truck toward the synagogue and entered a driveway where security guards opened fire, causing the car’s engine compartment to catch fire.
“At some point during the exchange of gunfire, Ghazali was shot in the head and shot himself,” she said.
It added that investigators later found large quantities of commercial explosives and containers containing a flammable liquid that we believe is gasoline.
The attack came amid heightened security across the United States since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran nearly two weeks ago.
Ghazali attended a memorial service for his family members who were killed, in nearby Dearborn, Michigan, along with other family members and mourners, many of them from the Lebanese town of Mashghara in southern Lebanon.
According to federal filings, Ghazali came to Detroit in 2011 on a visa granted to spouses of US citizens, and he became a US citizen in 2016.
Ghazali, a father of minors, separated from his wife, a pharmacist, in 2024 and has been working as a waiter recently.
