His parents had sent Abdulazeez to stay with family in Jordan in hopes of getting him away from friends who were a bad influence, the representative said.
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Investigators are examining his overseas travel to see if Abdulazeez came into contact with extremists.
Abdulazeez reportedly had suicidal thoughts and wrote in his diary about “becoming a martyr” after losing his job due to his drug abuse.
According to the initial investigation of police authorities, 24-year-old Muhammad Youseff Abdulazeez, the gunman, opened fire at two sites on Thursday at the Chattanooga reserve center and killed four Marines and wounded three others.
In the midst of a downward spiral, Abdulazeez would abuse sleeping pills, opioids, painkillers, marijuana and alcohol, ABC News reports.
Recently, Abdulazeez had begun working the night shift at a manufacturing plant and was taking medication to help with problems sleeping in the daytime, the person said, and he also had a prescription for muscle relaxants because of a back problem.
The U.S. Navy says a sailor who was shot in the attack on a military facility in Chattanooga has died, raising the death toll to five people.
According to ABC, a family representative said Abdulazeez rented the silver Mustang Tuesday that witnesses reported seeing immediately after the shooting. Investigators are focusing on a Walmart where they say Abdulazeez was joined by two other men as he bought ammunition just days before last week’s deadly shooting rampage.
Among the tragedies that have prompted the honor are the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas; the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012; the 2012 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya; the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013; and the 2013 Washington Navy Yard shooting. A police report said he told a Chattanooga officer he also was with friends who had been smoking marijuana.
A seven-month vacation to final yr was an exertion to “get him away from lousy influences in the USA”, not element of a route to radicalization, the family advised brokers.
The sailor’s name will not be released until 24 hours after the next of kin process is completed, the statement said.
His family said in a statement issued Saturday through a lawyer that Abdulazeez had suffered from depression for many years and “was not the son we knew and loved”. “It grieves us beyond belief to know that his pain found its expression in this heinous act of violence”.
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But CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes stressed that depression doesn’t necessarily make anyone more likely to kill.
