US military shooter a well-liked 'all-American kid'

Chattanooga

A 24-year-old Kuwaiti-born man who gunned down four Marines in a deadly rampage in Tennessee was "an all-American kid" from an "average" family, shocked friends and acquaintances said Thursday.

Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez, who allegedly opened fire at two US military facilities in Chattanooga before being killed in a shootout with police, apparently wrote in a blog post this week that life is "short and bitter."

But hours after his killing spree on Thursday, authorities were still piecing together a portrait of the former high school wrestler with a degree in engineering to explain why he may have turned into a cold-blooded killer.

The FBI raided Abdulazeez's home in a leafy Chattanooga suburb and vowed to use every means possible to "determine the cause or the reason why he carried out this attack."

Abdulazeez -- a naturalized US citizen from Kuwait, according to multiple reports citing US officials -- appears to have maintained a blog, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity on social media.

In a post written Monday, he said that "this life is short and bitter" and that Muslims should not let "the opportunity to submit to allah... pass you by."

The blog also makes fleeting references to sacrifice and jihad, but a short excerpt released by SITE did not contain any overt evidence of radicalization or threats.