Updated on: March 16, 2026 / 7:51 PM EDT / CBS Detroit
A person who identified herself as the ex-wife of the suspect in last week’s attack at Temple Israel told a 911 dispatcher that the suspect was “not stable,” according to a call obtained by CBS News Detroit.
The caller, who gave her name as “Fatima,” told Dearborn Heights dispatch that the suspect, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, was suicidal and that she had been helping him with funeral preparations after he lost two brothers in an airstrike in Lebanon amid the wider regional war. A source in the local Lebanese-American community told CBS News Fatima called authorities after Ghazali told her to “take care of my children.”
When the dispatcher asked if Ghazali had weapons, the caller said, “I don’t know at all … I’m scared. I don’t know if there’s anything. I know he’s by himself.” She later told the dispatcher, “The way that he was talking to me, he was telling me, ‘Take care of my family,’” adding, “He’s really upset.”
Dearborn Heights police confirmed the call was routed to them at about 12:26 p.m. on March 12, around the time of the attack in West Bloomfield.
Authorities said Ghazali drove to Temple Israel sometime before 10 a.m. and sat in the parking lot for about two hours before ramming his truck into an entrance at roughly 12:19 p.m., striking a security officer. The FBI says the suspect died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after engaging in a gunfight with security officers; the truck caught fire during the incident.
Temple Israel confirmed that all 140 students and staff were safe, and Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said the children’s day care was in another part of the building. The security guard who was struck was taken to a hospital; dozens of law enforcement officers were treated for smoke inhalation.
The Department of Homeland Security told CBS News that Ghazali, a Lebanese-born U.S. citizen, entered the United States legally in 2011 after receiving sponsorship from his then-wife and became a citizen in 2016.
On Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces said one of Ghazali’s brothers, identified as Ibrahim Muhammad Ghazali, was a Hezbollah commander who had been “eliminated” in a strike prior to the synagogue attack. Sources in Lebanon told a freelance journalist working for CBS News that Ghazali’s two brothers were members of a Hezbollah rocket unit in southern Lebanon.
The FBI has described the Michigan attack as a “targeted attack of violence against the Jewish community.”
Ash-har Quraishi and Lucia I Suarez Sang contributed to this report.
