DEARBORN HEIGHTS, Mich. (AP) — A Lebanese-born man who had learned a week earlier that four of his family members were killed in an Israeli airstrike in his native country, waited in his car outside a synagogue for two hours before ramming into the building where dozens of children were inside.
Authorities said Friday that Ayman Mohammad Ghazali, 41, crashed his car into Temple Israel outside Detroit on Thursday afternoon, then started firing his gun through the windshield, exchanging fire with an armed security guard.
Following the attack Thursday, a person familiar with the matter speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity said security guards in the building killed the gunman. Later, authorities said guards “neutralized” him. But Jennifer Runyan, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit field office, said during a news conference Friday that ultimately Ghazali fatally shot himself after he got stuck in his vehicle and the engine caught fire. Officials later found large quantities of commercial grade fireworks and several jugs of a liquid believed to be gasoline.
One of the largest Reform synagogues in the US
The FBI, which is leading the investigation, described the attack on one of the nation’s largest Reform synagogues, located in suburban West Bloomfield Township north of Detroit, as an act of violence targeting the Jewish community.
Runyan said that law enforcement didn’t have enough evidence to call the attack an act of terror at this time, …