By Camilo Montoya‑Galvez
Updated on: March 19, 2026 / 8:50 PM EDT / CBS News
A U.S. official who provided a copy of the image says the man who rammed a truck into a Michigan synagogue and opened fire on March 12 sent a photo of himself holding the AR-style rifle he used in the attack to a family member in Lebanon.
The photo shows Ayman Mohamad Ghazali dressed in all black with a black-and-white scarf, holding what appears to be a semiautomatic rifle with a scope. Yellow Arabic text, including verses from the Quran, has been edited onto the image. The verse at the top translates to: “Among the believers are men who have been true to what they pledged to God. Some of them have fulfilled their vow, and some are still waiting. They have never changed.” Additional script at the bottom references “vengeance.” The official said the photo was taken and edited before the attack and was sent to a relative the day Ghazali drove into the synagogue; the rifle in the picture is the same weapon investigators believe he used.
Ghazali, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lived and worked in Dearborn Heights, came from a southern Lebanese town now considered a Hezbollah stronghold. Four relatives there were killed in an Israeli drone strike on March 5, sources in Lebanon told CBS News; two of them were reported to have been members of Hezbollah’s rocket unit. Israeli officials later confirmed the death of one brother, Ibrahim Mohamad Ghazali, whom they described as a Hezbollah commander.
The attack at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, one of the country’s largest synagogue congregations, shocked the community. Young children were inside the building during the incident. No students or staff were injured, but a security guard was struck by Ghazali’s vehicle and knocked unconscious. The ramming ignited a fire inside the building, and some first responders were treated for smoke inhalation.
The FBI is investigating the incident as a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community.” At a briefing the day after the attack, Jennifer Runyon, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit Field Office, said Ghazali’s truck became jammed in a hallway, preventing his exit. She described a shootout between Ghazali and two security guards before Ghazali took his own life. Runyon also said Ghazali had waited in the synagogue parking lot for about two hours before driving into the building.
In the days before the attack, Ghazali purchased more than $2,000 worth of fireworks from a local store. Phantom Fireworks CEO Bruce Zoldan told CBS News that a store worker questioned the large, off-season purchase, and Ghazali said it was “to celebrate the end of Ramadan.”
The Department of Homeland Security told CBS News Ghazali entered the United States legally in 2011 after being sponsored by his then-wife and became a U.S. citizen in 2016. Ghazali called his former wife just before the attack; she then called police to warn them that he was “not stable.”