Thompson predicted that the perpetrator of the Beltway sniper attacks would be "a teenaged boy, who plays video games" and speculated incorrectly that he "may indeed ride a bicycle to and from his shooting locations, his gun broken down and placed in a backpack while he pedals." Saying that the shooter, Lee Boyd Malvo, had "trained" on "Halo", Thompson later claimed credit for this on "The Today Show": "I predicted that the beltway sniper would be a teen-aged boy that trained on a game switched to sniper mode. And three months later, NBC reported that that's exactly what Malvo did. And Muhammad had him train on the game to suppress his inhibition to kill." John Muhammad was a Gulf War veteran and earned an expert marksmanship badge in the U.S. Army.