[1] A convert to Islam, Carlos Bledsoe (who changed his name to Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad) had gone to Yemen in 2007 to teach English, staying about 16 months.

He claimed that he was sent on the attacks by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and pleaded guilty to the charges of capital murder.

In the Fort Hood shooting in November, US Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed 13 and wounded 32 other soldiers.

A Senate special report chaired by the Independent Joseph Lieberman declared it "the deadliest terrorist attack within the United States since September 11, 2001".

The two victims had completed basic training two weeks prior, and volunteered to work as recruiters, which was not their regular assignment.

[1][8][9] A witness, Lance P. Luplow, heard approximately seven loud bangs and then saw a black truck with tinted windows speeding away, with its tailgate down spilling bottles of water onto the street.

Ezeagwula, who was shot in his back, head, and buttocks, was rushed into surgery at Baptist Hospital in critical condition.

A police search of his apartment turned up Molotov cocktails, homemade sound suppressors, and compact discs labeled in Arabic script.

[16] Law enforcement officials said Bledsoe had researched various targets around the United States, including military bases, government facilities, and synagogues.

[8] While there, in September 2008 he married Reena Abdullah Ahmed Farag, an elementary school teacher from South Yemen.

[8][18] In his handwritten letters of May to October 2010, Muhammad claimed to have known people in Yemen who "showed him around and helped him get started," but he refused to identify them for what he referred to as "security reasons.

According to his 2010 letters about this period, in his car were books about explosives, literature by Anwar Al-Awlaki (the late cleric in Yemen linked to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), and videos and reading material about "Muslim soldiers in different parts of the world".

James E. Hensley Jr., Bledsoe's American lawyer after his arrest in the United States, later said that he was radicalized by Islamic fundamentalists while in prison.

The Task Force also investigated the suspect's visit to Columbus, Ohio; authorities had monitored some Somali Americans traveling from there to Somalia to "wage jihad.

"[8][13][20][21] According to Muhammed's seven handwritten letters from May to October 2010, which he sent to The Commercial Appeal newspaper, he described his planning and activities related to his June 2009 attack.

[8] His initial plan was to kill rabbis and target Zionist organizations, and to attack army recruiting centers.

According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, he used Google Maps to plan attacks on recruiting centers in at least five states (including in New York, Atlanta, Louisville, and Philadelphia).

He also intended to target Times Square in New York City, Jewish institutions (including in Atlanta), a day-care center, a post office, and a Baptist church.

He then drove to Nashville and threw a Molotov cocktail at an orthodox rabbi's house, but the device failed to detonate.

[1][8][17][23] In a March 2011 Congressional hearing addressing the issue of domestic radicalization of Muslims, Muhammad's father spoke of his son's descent into extremism.

[8] In January 2010, Arkansas Judge Herbert Wright ordered the State's Public Defenders Commission to pay part of the bill for Bledsoe's private attorney.

He claimed to be a "soldier in Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" (AQAP), and described the recruiting office shooting as a "Jihadi attack."

[26] At the time the County Prosecutor Jegley said that he was still intending to go to trial; he would have had to recommend that Muhammed's plea be accepted for the court to do so.

Bledsoe described his son as "unable to process reality" and being so "brainwashed" that he wanted to be convicted of terrorism and executed, thus becoming a martyr.

[4] In June 2010, Bledsoe was charged with assaulting an inmate with a weapon fashioned out of eyeglasses, after a similar attack on a jail officer in April.

[30][31] The suspect was noted in early press accounts as among recent Muslim converts planning or carrying out violent attacks that security experts called a disturbing new domestic trend.

The attack came less than two weeks after a foiled bomb plot on two synagogues in Riverdale, New York, led by four men with records of incarceration, drug abuse and mental illness.

Neil Livingstone, a terrorism consultant, said that people on the margins of society are "easy marks" for recruiters offering them ideological and fanatical religious justifications for violence, noting "Most of these guys — I think what it comes down to — they're misfits, they believe they've suffered injustice.