American War Veteran Kills 3 and Himself
By DAVE MONTGOMERY, MANNY FERNANDEZ and ASHLEY SOUTHALL
Officials said the soldier who opened fire at Fort Hood Army base was being evaluated for post-traumatic stress disorder.
U.S.
Iraq Veteran at Fort Hood Kills 3 and Himself in Rampage
Video|1:34
Credit
Officials Discuss Fort Hood Shooting
Authorities at Fort Hood and Scott and White
Memorial Hospital discussed the shooting at the Army base that killed 4
and wounded 16 on Wednesday.
KILLEEN,
Tex. — A soldier who was being evaluated for post-traumatic stress
disorder opened fire at Fort Hood on Wednesday, killing three people and
wounding 16 before killing himself, the authorities said. The shooting
set off a huge police response and shut down the sprawling Army base,
the same facility where a deadly rampage by an officer resulted in 13
deaths in 2009.
Fort
Hood’s commanding general said the gunman, an Army specialist who had
served in Iraq and was being treated for behavioral and mental health
issues, had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The commander, Lt.
Gen. Mark A. Milley, told reporters that the soldier’s motive remained
unclear, but that the shooting did not appear to be related to
terrorism.
A
Pentagon official said the suspected gunman was Army Specialist Ivan
Lopez. General Milley, while not identifying Specialist Lopez by name,
said the gunman had served four months in Iraq in 2011 and was being
evaluated for post-traumatic stress disorder, but had not yet been
diagnosed with the condition. There were indications that he had
self-reported a traumatic brain injury when he returned from Iraq, General Milley said.
Reports
of the shooting sent dozens of local, state and federal law enforcement
officials rushing to the base in Killeen as they had in November 2009.
In Chicago, President Obama said that White House and Pentagon officials
were following the events closely. “We are going to get to the bottom
of exactly what happened,” the president said. “We’re heartbroken
something like this might have happened again.”
The
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, said
that many questions remained but that officials’ focus was on supporting
the victims and their families. “This is a community that has faced and
overcome crises with resilience and strength,” he said in a statement.
The
episode appeared to have unfolded around 4:30 p.m. at a medical support
building. Witnesses described chaos as gunshots rang out.
The
base was put on lockdown, as Army officials took to Twitter and
Facebook to alert soldiers there to shelter in place and stay away from
windows. The injured were transported to Fort Hood’s medical center and
other area hospitals.
Video|0:58
Credit
Obama Discusses Fort Hood Shooting
President Obama discussed the shooting at Fort Hood on Wednesday.
The
authorities said Specialist Lopez appeared to have walked into one
building, then gone inside a vehicle and fired shots from the vehicle
with a .45-caliber Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol that had
recently been bought in the Killeen area. He got out of the vehicle,
walked into another building and opened fire again, and then engaged
with a female military police officer before shooting himself.
He
put his hands up, General Milley said, then reached under his jacket.
The female officer pulled out her weapon, and then Specialist Lopez put
his weapon to his head and fired. General Milley described the officer’s
actions as “clearly heroic,” adding: “She did her job. She did exactly
what we would expect of U.S. Army military police.”
Specialist Lopez had arrived at Fort Hood in February from another installation, officials said.
Scott
and White Memorial Hospital in nearby Temple, Tex., said it had
received eight patients and expected one more. Three victims were in
critical condition, and five others were expected to be upgraded from
serious to fair condition overnight. The injuries included gunshot
wounds to the abdomen, chest and neck.
Tayra
Dehart, 33, stood outside the visitor center at Fort Hood’s main gate
Wednesday evening, anxiously awaiting word from her husband of 10
months, a 30-year-old sergeant who was caught in the lockdown.
“I
jumped out my skin,” Ms. Dehart said, telling of her reaction when she
heard the news of the shootings from the couple’s home nearby. Declining
to give her husband’s name for security reasons, Ms. Dehart said she
had immediately sped to the base and had been trying unsuccessfully to
reach her husband on his cellphone.
“I’m like a waiting bird,” she said in describing her vigil just inside the base gate.
After a tense wait of more than three hours, she finally heard from him and said he was safe.
EAST
RANGE RD.
Location of the
2009 shooting
FORT HOOD MILITARY BASE
Site of Wednesday’s shooting
Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center
Dallas
Fort Worth
20
TEXAS
Waco
190
Killeen
FORT HOOD
MILITARY
BASE
Killeen
45
TEXAS
Austin
Houston
10
San
Antonio
3 miles
50 miles
Traffic
at the main gate of the base was at a standstill as the authorities
scanned exiting vehicles and blocked cars from entering. A Central Texas
College campus four miles away was also placed on lockdown. Shortly
before 9 p.m., the lockdown at the base was lifted. All-clear sirens
sounded and traffic resumed in and out of the main gate.
The heightened alert brought back memories of the previous shooting at Fort Hood.
On
Nov. 5, 2009, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire inside the Soldier
Readiness Processing Center, shooting unarmed soldiers and commissioned
officers as they tried to hide under desks and tables. Major Hasan, a
military psychiatrist and a Muslim, shot and killed 12 unarmed soldiers
and one civilian and wounded or shot at 30 other soldiers and two police
officers. Prosecutors said one of his motivations was to kill as many
soldiers as he could to wage jihad on American military personnel. A
Senate report called it the worst act of terrorism on American soil
since the Sept. 11 attacks.
After
a military trial that was held at the base last year under tight
security, a jury of 13 senior Army officers found Major Hasan guilty and
sentenced him to death. He was transferred after the trial to Fort
Leavenworth in Kansas, home of the military’s death row and death
chamber.
In
addition to the shooting in 2009 and the one on Wednesday, Fort Hood
was the site of a planned attack that was foiled by the authorities.
A
22-year-old Army private, Naser Jason Abdo, was arrested in July 2011
and charged with trying to detonate an explosive device at a restaurant
frequented by Fort Hood soldiers. Private Abdo was found at a hotel room
near the base with a .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol, bomb-making
materials and an article describing how to make a bomb in a kitchen. He
had been involved in disputes with the military over his Muslim beliefs
and his coming deployment to Afghanistan. He was convicted by a federal
jury of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, among other
charges.
Representative
Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas and chairman of the Homeland
Security Committee, said the three episodes had given him concern that
the base was “becoming a target for potential jihadists.”
In
Washington, intelligence officials said they were investigating
potential terrorist connections to the shooting, but so far had no
evidence to suggest any.
Dave Montgomery
reported from Killeen, Tex., Manny Fernandez from Houston and Ashley
Southall from New York. Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting from
New York, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
COPY http://international.nytimes.com/
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