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Combat And Purple Hearts: Meet The Four Marines Killed In The Chattanooga Shooting

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Jonah Bennett Contributor
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Further investigation by media outlets has revealed the identities of the four Marines brutally murdered by Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez on Thursday morning.

Authorities have not released official details corroborating the reports, but neighbors and family members seem to think that the veracity of the identities is on solid ground, WBIR reports.

Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, Lance Cpl. Skip Wells and Sgt. Carson Holmqust were the four Marines killed in the shooting. Abdulazeez, a 24-year-old naturalized citizen from Kuwait, targeted a military recruiting center, after which point he moved on to a Naval reserve center about 7 miles away. He was able to hold up for some time against police before he was taken out by officers on the scene. (RELATED: Four Marines Downed By Shooting At Naval Recruiting Building)

“We will treat this as a terrorism investigation until it can be determined that it is not,” special FBI agent Ed Reinhold said, according to CNN.

Sgt. Thomas Sullivan grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, and after graduating from Cathedral High School joined up with the Marines. He received two Purple Hearts and a Combat Action Ribbon for his two tours of service in Iraq.

“There’s no Marine you would want that was better in combat than him,” Josh Parnell, a friend of Sullivan’s, told  Patch.

Staff Sgt. David Wyatt is survived by his wife, Lorri Wyatt, whom he married in 2004, and their two children. David studied at the University of Montana and specialized in field artillery in the military.

Lance Cpl. Skip Wells was 21-years-old, the youngest of the four slain. Before joining the Marine Forces Reserve, he went to Georgia Southern University. Fellow Marine Omer Turhan said that Wells was the kind of person who “didn’t let anything bring him down.”

“If there was one person smiling, it was him,” Turhan told the NY Daily News. “When we had to wake up at 3 a.m., he’d still be smiling. No one else would be happy, but he’d still have a huge smile on his face.”

Wells’ mother, Cathy, said that he died doing what he loved.

Sgt. Carson Holmquist lived in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and enlisted in the Marine Corps in January 2009. He served two tours in Afghanistan, one in 2013 and the second in 2014. He worked as battery motor transport chief and hailed originally from Wisconsin.

The remains of the four are on their way to the Dover Air Force Base.

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