» 13 Dead, 38 wounded in Shooting at Fort Hood Ms Sparky

13 Dead, 38 wounded in Shooting at Fort Hood

November 5, 2009 — Forseti

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UPDATED 5:00 AM PST, 7 Nov 2009

Thursday’s Fort Hood shooting rampage that left 13 dead and 38 injured, of which 30 needed to be hospitalized.

13 slain in soldier’s Fort Hood ambush, Army says

06:34 AM CST on Friday, November 6, 2009
By CHRISTY HOPPE

FORT HOOD, Texas – The bloody scene might have been drawn from the scarred memories of Iraq war veterans assigned to this Army outpost in the hills of Central Texas: 13 dead and 30 wounded, gunned down in a sudden ambush.

But Thursday’s bloody assault at Fort Hood was committed by one of the Army’s own. As night fell across the nation’s largest military outpost on Thursday, investigators sought to explain why Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a 39-year-old Army psychiatrist, reportedly turned a pair of pistols on his comrades.

Late Thursday, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone and Col. Ben Danner gave an account of the chaos and carnage that began about 1:30 p.m. inside two buildings that house psychiatric, medical and dental units:

Officials say Hasan used two handguns, including a semi-automatic, to fire at fellow soldiers. Neither of the guns was military-issue.

As Hasan fired, an unidentified female civilian officer managed to shoot him at least once before being shot herself.

The gunman was finally felled by four bullets and airlifted by medical helicopter to an undisclosed hospital where he underwent surgery. Early reports said the gunman was dead, but Cone later said Hasan was in stable condition under guard at a hospital and “his death is not imminent.” He was on a ventilator and unconscious, officials.

Life-saving actions

The general said that many of the military personnel used life-saving skills learned as part of their training. He described a scene where people were “ripping their uniforms and taking care of each other.”

Still unexplained Thursday night was the motive for the attack.

Asked whether it could be considered a terrorist attack, Cone replied, “I couldn’t rule that out” but said the evidence does not point to that.

At one point, officials detained and interviewed three suspects, But they now think that there was a single shooter.

Apartment searched

Late Thursday night, Killeen police had cordoned off Hasan’s apartment at the Casa del Norte Apartments and had evacuated the neighborhood. They were concerned that Hasan might have booby-trapped his home and were cautiously moving in with a bomb squad.

Family members said Hasan, a native-born Virginian and 1997 biochemistry graduate of Virginia Tech University, had been distraught over an impending overseas deployment.

Hasan had been posted to Fort Hood in July, after serving for six years at Water Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He was unmarried, authorities said.

Nader Hasan, a cousin of the major, told Fox News that Hasan had suffered harassment from comrades over his Middle Eastern heritage.

“He is a good American,” Hasan told the news channel. “We are shocked.”

While wounded were being transported to hospitals around the area, authorities ordered the massive post closed. About 40,000 military personnel are based at the post, one of the country’s largest military installations.

“It’s a terrible tragedy. It’s stunning,” Cone told reporters gathered outside the vast facility northeast of Austin. “Soldiers and family members and many of the great civilians who work here are absolutely devastated.”

‘Stay put!’

At the Military Personnel Center, where arriving soldiers are processed and records updated, civilian employee Poi Shaffer was updating records for a soldier when she heard sirens on Battalion Avenue – about a mile away from the scene of the shooting.

“I heard sirens, ambulances, fire trucks, all kinds of stuff,” said Shaffer. “At first I thought it was a wreck, but I kept hearing more sirens. It kept going on.”

When she finished processing the soldier’s records, she checked her phone and saw that her husband, who works on the base for the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, had been trying to call her. He phoned again and said urgently: “Where are you? Stay put!”

Her husband was close enough to the scene of the attack to hear the gunfire, said Shaffer.

Wife, baby on base

Spc. Joshua Branum, just back from his second long tour in Iraq, was at the Killeen courthouse taking care of a minor traffic issue when he heard of shootings and death at Fort Hood.

Three months back and now it was his wife and 1-year-daughter in harm’s way. “I went into combat mode – autopilot,” he said.

He immediately called his wife and told her to lock the doors and windows. “Keep yourself and the baby down at all costs,” he said to her. “And then I started on my way.”

For almost two hours, Branum paced outside the main gate at Fort Hood in his desert fatigues as he and more than a dozen active military personnel waited for the post to lift a lockdown so they could see their loved ones. Phone lines were jammed, and some were having trouble getting through.

He said he wanted to patrol the perimeter in his truck, to feel he could help in some way.

“In a situation like this, any soldier feels that I should have been there. Maybe there wouldn’t have been so many dead, maybe there wouldn’t have been so many wounded,” Branum said.

He said he was angered to hear that it was a soldier who fired at colleagues.

Having defused bombs and cleared roadways during his first two-year tour in Iraq, Branum said he knows all about post traumatic stress disorder and has suffered from it the past two years.

“If they blame this on PTSD, I’ll lose my faith,” Branum said. “PTSD does not cause you to organize and carry out a shooting.”

The lockdown was finally lifted about 9 p.m.

‘Texas family’ tragedy

In Austin, Gov. Rick Perry issued a statement that read in part: “The Texas family suffered a significant loss today with the tragedy at Fort Hood. Along with all Texans, Anita and I are keeping those affected by today’s incidents in our thoughts and prayers.”

Perry ordered that all Texas flags be lowered to half-staff until Sunday.

The FBI and Texas Rangers joined with military investigators in the search to determine how and why the attack occurred.

Around the country, some bases stepped up security precautions, but no others were locked down.

“The bottom line for us is that we are increasing security at our gates because the threat hasn’t yet been defined, and we’re reminding our Marines to be vigilant in their areas of responsibility,” said Capt. Rob Dolan, public affairs officer for the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Ariz.

After nightfall at Fort Hood, the religious gathered to pray, the patriotic gave blood, and doctors and nurses worked to save the lives of the wounded.

Sirens continued to sound, but traffic once again rumbled along Battalion Avenue and speakers blared, “The emergency no longer exists.”

President Obama called the shootings “tragic” and “a horrific outburst of violence.”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry ordered that all flags in the state be lowered to half-staff until Sunday as a tribute to the victims.

“We are deeply saddened by today’s events but resolve to continue supporting our troops and protecting our citizens,” he said.

In the aftermath of the incident, Scott & White Memorial Hospital in Temple, Texas, posted an online appeal for blood as it began receiving victims.

“Due to the recent events on Fort Hood, we are in URGENT need of ALL blood types,” it said.

Fort Hood is the Army’s largest U.S. post, with about 40,000 troops stationed there. It is home to the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division and elements of the 4th Infantry Division, as well as the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the 13th Corps Support Command. It is near Killeen, Texas. The Headquarters Unit and three brigades of the 1st Cavalry are deployed in Iraq.

The fort is home to the Warrior Combat Stress Reset Program, which helps soldiers returning from war with combat stress and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

In June, Fort Hood’s commander, Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, told CNN that he was trying to ease the kind of stresses soldiers face.

He has pushed for soldiers working a day schedule to return home for dinner by 6 p.m. and required his personal authorization for anyone working weekends. At the time, two soldiers stationed there had committed suicide in 2009 — a rate well below those of other posts.

Nearby Killeen was the scene of one of the most deadly shootings in American history 18 years ago when George Hennard crashed his truck into a Luby’s cafeteria and then began shooting, killing 23 people and wounding 20.

Hennard’s spree lasted 14 minutes. He eventually took his own life.

(Link to original article)

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I will update this as more information becomes available. Please keep these soldiers, their families and friends in your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time.