Temple Israel dattacker is dead, Oakland County sheriff says
A driver that crashed into a school at Temple Israel synagogue is dead, according to Oakland County Sheriff Bouchard. A guard was injured and is expected to recover, Bouchard said.
Investigation continues into the attack on Temple Israel, a Jewish synagogue with an early childhood center in West Bloomfield where a man drove a truck into the building midday Thursday, March 12.
Details were beginning to emerge by Friday, March 13 regarding the suspect in the “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community,” as the FBI called it.
The truck got down a hallway and security fired shots amid the attack, which ended with the man dead, a security guard injured and a fire, officials have said.
Still, multiple questions remained unanswered. Some answers were hazy at best.
Here’s what we are still asking and what we know:
Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, the man who rammed a truck into a West Bloomfield Township synagogue Thursday, killed himself inside the facility when confronted by security, according to details provided by the FBI. Ghazali, 41, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head after he drove his truck into Temple Israel, said Jennifer Runyan, special agent in charge of the Detroit FBI field office. She also confirmed he had a large amount of commercial fireworks and gasoline in the back of his truck.
A secretary at the Islamic Institute of America in Dearborn Heights confirmed in a brief phone interview with the Detroit Free Press on Friday, March 13, the mosque held a service the previous Sunday for Ibrahim Ghazali and his children, Ali and Fatima. The service also remembered Kassim Ghazali, she confirmed. Ibrahim and Kassim are brothers of Ayman Mohamad Ghazali.
National and local Jewish leaders, federal and state elected representatives, and local law enforcement members said during a news conference that the attack wasn’t an isolated incident, but only the latest outbreak of violence amid spreading antisemitism − online, in words and increasingly in violent actions.
“This is exactly the situation Jewish communities across the country have been bracing for since Oct. 7,” said Elyssa Schmier, Anti-Defamation League Michigan regional director, referring to widespread attacks in 2023 by Hamas militants in Israel that left approximately 1,200 dead and another 251 people taken hostage, prompting an ongoing Israeli military intervention into Gaza,.
Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard, speaking the day after the attack at the synagogue at 5725 Walnut Lake Road in West Bloomfield, said that investigators expected to learn more Friday about the truck and the driver.
“It took a long time to get that vehicle even out of the building,” Bouchard told the Free Press. “It’s at one of our buildings now. There’s going to be an effort to go through to figure out exactly what was in the truck in addition to the individual and the firearm.”
Bouchard wouldn’t go into details about the gun or the other items found thus far and wouldn’t confirm if the driver of the truck fired any shots before dying.
A question in need of definitive clarification Friday was whether the suspect fired a weapon after crashing a truck into the building in West Bloomfield.
Officials seemed to indicate that was the case, with Bouchard referring to the suspect as a “shooter” when he gave the first briefing to the press at the scene Thursday.
Additionally, the West Bloomfield Police Department issued a news release on social media late Thursday stating, “According to witnesses, the suspect rammed a vehicle into the synagogue and fired a weapon before being confronted by Temple Israel security personnel, who stopped the threat.”
However, the FBI is leading the investigation and in a formal press conference Thursday evening, officials describing the incident did not clearly state that the person fired shots or clarify how many, but spoke of being alerted to an active shooter situation before they responded.
At about 12:19 p.m., police received a 911 call about an active shooter situation at Temple Israel where the individual drove into the building, West Bloomfield Deputy Police Chief Dale Young said at the evening press conference.
Security personnel “engaged” the person and “neutralized” the threat, he said.
On occasion, police or dispatchers receive reports of active shooters, but investigations show that shots were not involved.
Therefore, the Free Press is seeking to definitively confirm this aspect of Thursday’s incident.
The cause of death for the person who drove into Temple Israel was not clear as of the next morning.
Officials have said that security “engaged” and shot at the occupant of the truck, who died in the vehicle. They’ve also used the term “neutralized.”
However, the Oakland County sheriff said Thursday at the scene that at that point it was unclear if the man was struck by shots from a security guard or perhaps a self-inflicted injury.
Yes and no.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, addressing the press the next day, said more than 100 children who were 5 years old or younger were at the synagogue’s school the day of the attack. None of the children were hurt.
In fact, family members and rabbis told the Free Press that kids reported going on a field trip and thinking that an alarm had gone off that day. Official and community members alike saluted the work of the security guards and teachers in preventing a bigger tragedy.
One security guard was hurt in the attack. The guard was hit by the truck and knocked unconscious, but was expected to recover.
The motive was unclear as of Friday morning, and officials called for patience during the investigation.
“All of us have thoughts of maybe why this happened,” Bouchard said at the Thursday press conference. “But we don’t operate in a world where we can presume something, we have to determine through investigation and specificity, and that is the work that’s in progress as we speak.”
While the official motive remains unclear, leaders including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer labeled the incident as antisemitic.
“This is targeting babies who are Jewish,” Whitmer said while addressing the press on Friday morning. “That’s antisemitism at its absolute worst.”
The attack “was hate, plain and simple,” the governor said. She called for the lowering of rhetoric in the country and highlighted a rise in attacks on the Jewish community.
“People like the person that attacked this community yesterday get fomented by rhetoric that they see online and that they see on television and they hear on the radio,” she said. “It radicalizes people, and it endangers our fellow Michiganders.”
A man named Ayman Mohamad Ghazali was identified by a federal spokesperson as the now-deceased person in the attack. Information from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson and records obtained by the Free Press also showed:
Ghazali was a 41-year-old U.S. citizen who immigrated from Lebanon.Ghazali was born in Lebanon but entered the U.S. in 2010 on a visa as the spouse of a U.S. citizen.He married in 2006 in Lebanon but got divorced last year. His ex-wife was born in the suburb of Lincoln Park.Ghazali was granted U.S. citizenship in 2016.He was the father of two children, ages 12 and 13.
Additionally, the suspect “lost several members of his own family, including his niece and nephew, in an Israeli attack on their home in Lebanon” earlier in March, said Dearborn Heights Mayor Mo Baydoun in a statement.
Residents in a Dearborn Heights neighborhood stated Ghazali lived there, and one said they learned the previous night that his brother was killed in Lebanon.
Israel has targeted Lebanon since the war with Iran started in late February. More than 600 have been killed there, according to media outlets including Reuters.
At least 30 law enforcement officers were taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation following the attack, the county sheriff said Thursday evening.
The building, at some point, caught fire.
“What it did, it caused terrible, terrible smoke in that part of the building, and so when all of our people collectively went in that building to search out the threat, to remove (the) innocent, a lot of them took in significant amount of smoke inhalation and they are at the hospital being treated,” Bouchard said.
Oakland County SWAT team members were among those being treated for smoke inhalation, along with other first responders
Additional clarifications regarding the fire were still being sought Friday.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was investigating its source, the sheriff said Thursday.