The Michigan Synagogue Attacker Was a Quiet Restaurant Worker

Days before the antisemitic violence, an imam recalled seeing Ayman Mohamad Ghazali at a service for his relatives who had been killed in the war in Lebanon.

The auditorium at the Islamic Institute of America in Dearborn Heights, Mich., was packed one night in early March. At least 400 people, the imam said — many from the Lebanese village of Machghara — had gathered to mourn two brothers and two young children killed in an airstrike in Lebanon stemming from the United States and Israel’s war in Iran.

Ayman Mohamad Ghazali stood in a receiving line near the door, one of about 15 to 20 family members greeting visitors. Imam Hassan Qazwini, who leads the center, moved down the row. He presided over the memorial, offering a eulogy as he regularly does at such gatherings. When he reached Mr. Ghazali, whom he said he did not know, they barely spoke.

“Usually the family line up in a row at the entrance — when people come in, they just shake their hand and offer a word,” Mr. Qazwini said. “That was my entire communication with him.”

The imam said he had not seen Mr. Ghazali at a service before. He glanced at him and moved on. In a room full of grief, Mr. Ghazali was nearly invisible.

Days later, Mr. Ghazali was dead.

On the morning of March 13, Mr. Ghazali drove a truck through the door at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, moved down a hallway and exchanged gunfire with security guards. He was killed. One guard was injured. Roughly 140 children and staff members at the temple’s preschool were safely evacuated.

Federal officials called it a targeted act of violence against the Jewish community.

Mr. Ghazali, 41, had worked the front counter at Hamido, a Lebanese restaurant in Dearborn Heights known for its rotisserie chicken and shawarma. He took orders. Mayor Mo Baydoun of Dearborn Heights, whose offices were nearby, had eaten there and knew him by sight.

“He never let a pack of garlic go for free,” Mr. Baydoun said. “Fifty cents. Every time. You would think even the mayor could get some free garlic. Nope. Fifty cents.”

Court records show Mr. Ghazali was earning about $20,000 a year from his job at Hamido. His wife of 18 years, a pharmacist, filed to legally divorce him in 2024, though her lawyer wrote in a court filing that the couple had already been divorced through Islamic provisions in December 2021.

His wife was born in Michigan, according to the couple’s marriage certificate. They had married in Lebanon in 2006. The couple had two children, now teenagers, who had been staying with their mother, who was granted sole physical custody. A judge required Mr. Ghazali to pay $248 a month in child support.

On March 5, his brother Ibrahim Ghazali and the brother’s two young children were killed in the strike, along with another brother, Qassem.

A memorial was held for the family at the Islamic Center on March 8. Near the entrance, photographs of the two children were on display.

“There were a lot of tears,” Mr. Qazwini said. “It was very somber, very sad to see those two innocent kids being killed. And obviously that inflames feelings and anger when you see this kind of atrocity being leveled against innocent people.”

Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia and political party that has long held sway in Lebanon, began firing rockets at Israel in response to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Israel has struck back by bombing sites in Lebanon that it has said are connected to the group.

Mr. Ghazali had recently stopped showing up to work. Co-workers at Hamido confirmed he had been absent from his shifts in the days leading up to the attack. He spent his time alone.

Dave Abdallah, a real estate broker in Dearborn Heights who often ordered lunch at Hamido, received word of the attack through texts and news alerts.

Mr. Ghazali was always “very quiet,” Mr. Abdallah said in an interview. “Very, very on the quiet side. He was just the guy that would take the orders at the front at the restaurant.” He paused. “I guess he just snapped,” he added. “Losing all his family. Being alone. He just lost it.”

The attack landed in one of the most distinctive patches of American civic life. West Bloomfield and the nearby suburbs of Bloomfield Hills and Farmington Hills have anchored one of the most established Jewish communities in the Midwest for generations — synagogues, day schools, cultural institutions and families who have been in Michigan for a century. Temple Israel is among its landmarks.

Twenty-five miles away, Dearborn is home to one of the largest Arab American populations in the country; roughly 55 percent of its 110,000 residents claim Arab heritage. Dearborn Heights sits on its western edge, similarly rooted.

The two worlds are not strangers. Mr. Qazwini — who has led his congregation for more than two decades and become one of the most recognized Muslim voices in America — had once visited Temple Israel for an interfaith gathering. He remembered the rabbi as gracious.

“There is no room for violence, especially in our religion,” he said. “Islam never tolerates those kinds of attacks. If someone does any kind of violence, they are responsible for it — and Islam, our religion, nor our community should be held accountable.”

On Friday morning, Mr. Ghazali’s neighborhood was quiet. At his small, one-story brick home, two doors were sealed with heavy padlocks. An Amazon package sat on the front porch near a wicker chair with blue cushions. The front picture window was boarded up, with shattered glass and pieces of wrecked window frame on the ground below. The front lawn was rutted with deep tire tracks. A neighbor said law enforcement officials had smashed the window during a raid the previous evening.

Al Hadi, 19, a college student who lives next door, said he watched from his upstairs window as about two dozen law enforcement officials worked outside, some climbing into the house through the smashed window. He said he had often waved to Mr. Ghazali and seen him with his two children.

“He seemed like a really sweet guy,” Mr. Hadi said.

Chadi Zreik, 32, another neighbor, said word had spread rapidly through the community Thursday night. “It’s a tight-knit community,” Mr. Zreik said. “My first thought was, ‘What was he thinking? How could somebody come to this conclusion?’”

“I think this community does stand with West Bloomfield now,” he added. “I can say 100 percent nobody in this community condones this.”

Mr. Zreik said he was already thinking about what would come next. “Anytime anything happens in this community,” he said, “it’s under a microscope.”

As Israeli strikes on Lebanon have mounted, such memorial events have become frequent, Mr. Qazwini said. People approach him with their losses the way others might report the weather. I lost five family members, they tell him. Seven. Nine.

Mr. Ghazali, he said, was the first local instance he had seen of someone who could not hold the weight.

“This is the first public case we have seen,” he said. “We have never heard of any similar case where someone would have a meltdown.”

In Islam, the handling of the dead is among the faith’s most sacred obligations. But no one has contacted the mosque about a burial for Mr. Ghazali. There are no plans.

“We never received a request,” Mr. Qazwini said. “We don’t even know what happened to the body.”

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