4 die, 16 hurt in Fort Hood shooting

Gunman a GI, tested for PTSD, officer says

Staff Sgt. John Robertson waits with other soldiers and family members Wednesday outside their post at Fort Hood, Texas, for updates about the situation inside.
Staff Sgt. John Robertson waits with other soldiers and family members Wednesday outside their post at Fort Hood, Texas, for updates about the situation inside.

FORT HOOD, Texas - A soldier opened fire Wednesday on fellow service members at Fort Hood in Texas, killing three people and wounding 16 before committing suicide at the same Army post where more than a dozen people were slain in a 2009 attack, authorities said.

The gunman, who served in Iraq in 2011, had self-reported a traumatic brain injury and was taking antidepressants and undergoing an assessment to determine whether he had post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, the senior officer at the post.

There was no indication the attack was related to terrorism, Milley said.

A Texas congressman said the shooting happened at a medical center. Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, also identified the suspect as Army Spc. Ivan Lopez. Lopez, 34, was a military truck driver, officials said.

Police spent Wednesday night searching his apartment in Killeen, the city that abuts the post.

Preliminary law enforcement reports indicated that a dispute between Lopez and another soldier led to the shooting. It was unclear what caused the dispute.

“We do not know a motive,” Milley said of the gunman, whom he declined to identify. “He had behavioral-health and mental-health issues and was being treated for that.”

Milley said the soldier opened fire with a .45-caliber Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistol that was purchased recently but was not authorized to be taken to the post.

He then got into a vehicle and continued firing before he entered another building and kept shooting.

He was eventually confronted by a female military police officer in a parking lot. He put his hands up but then pulled out a gun from under his jacket. “She engaged,” Milley said, and then the soldier put the gun to his head and shot himself.

The injured were taken to Darnall Army Community Hospital at Fort Hood and other hospitals.

Doctors at the Scott & White hospital in Temple said Wednesday that they had treated eight of the wounded and that one more was on the way. Three of the patients were in critical condition, and five were in serious condition. Seven of them were male, and one was female. Their injuries ranged from mild to life-threatening, a majority of them caused by single gunshots in the neck,chest and abdomen.

The shooting took place about 4:30 p.m. CDT, said Lt. Col. LaTondra Kinley in Fort Hood’s public-affairs office. After it began, the Army’s official Twitter feed said the post had been locked down. Hours later, all-clear sirens sounded.

David Ross, a Fort Hood official, said Wednesday evening that the site had been “completely sealed” while every building was being searched.

After the shooting, authorities scanned exiting vehicles and blocked cars from entering the base. A spokesman for the FBI in San Antonio said agents in that office were part of the response.

Service members throughout the base were not permitted to leave their offices and quarters, and those outdoors were immediately ushered inside.

Spc. Cody Bishop, 28, said he and his company of about 140 soldiers were in formation on a training exercise when they got the order to shelter in place.

“We were standing in formation. They suddenly called everybody inside. They said, ‘Stay inside. You can’t even go outside.’”

Bishop said soldiers immediately gathered around television sets to try to learn what was going on. “We’ve got four different news channels on and getting four different reports,” he said.

Outside the base, some relatives of soldiers waited for news about their loved ones.

Tayra DeHart, 33, said she had last heard from her husband, a soldier at the post, that he was safe, but that was hours earlier.

“The last two hours have been the most nerve-wracking I’ve ever felt. I know God is here protecting me and all the soldiers, but I have my phone in my hand just hoping it will ring and it will be my husband,” DeHart said.

In Chicago, President Barack Obama said he was following the situation closely and that the government would get to the bottom of what happened.

He said Wednesday’s shooting raised painful memories of a 2009 mass shooting at the post. Thirteen people were killed and more than 30 wounded in that attack, the deadliest on a domestic military installation in history.

“We’re heartbroken that something like this might’ve happened again,” Obama said.

“The folks there have sacrificed so much on behalf of our freedom. Many of the people there have been on multiple tours to Iraq and Afghanistan,” Obama said. “They serve with valor, they serve with distinction, and when they’re at their home base they need to feel safe. We don’t yet know what happened tonight, but obviously that sense of safety has been broken once again.”

The president spoke without notes or prepared remarks in the same room of a steakhouse where he had just met with about 25 donors at a previously scheduled fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said many questions remained about the shooting and the focus was on supporting the victims and their families.

“This is a community that has faced and overcome crises with resilience and strength,” he added.

Fort Hood, about 60 miles north of Austin, houses about 45,000 troops and is home to the Army’s 1st Calvary and 4th Infantry divisions.

The November 2009 attack there happened inside a crowded building where soldiers were waiting to get vaccines and take care of routine paperwork after recently returning from deployments or while preparing to go to Afghanistan and Iraq. Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan was convicted and sentenced to death last year in that shooting.

According to testimony during Hasan’s trial in August, Hasan walked inside carrying two weapons and several loaded magazines, shouted “Allahu Akbar!” - Arabic for “God is great!” - and opened fire with a handgun.

Witnesses said he targeted soldiers as he walked through the building, leaving pools of blood, spent casings and dying soldiers on the floor. Photos of the scene were shown to the 13 officers on the military jury.

The rampage ended when Hasan was shot in the back by Fort Hood police officers outside the building, which left him paralyzed from the waist down. Hasan is now on death row at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

After that shooting, the military tightened security at bases nationwide. Those measures included issuing security personnel long-barreled weapons, adding an insider-attack scenario to their training and strengthening ties to local law enforcement, said Peter Daly, a vice admiral who retired from the Navy in 2011.

The military also joined an FBI intelligence-sharing program aimed at identifying terror threats.

In September, a former Navy man opened fire at the Washington Navy Yard, leaving at least 13 people dead, including the gunman. After that shooting, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered the Pentagon to review security at all U.S. defense installations worldwide and examine the granting of security clearances that allow access to them.

Asked Wednesday about security improvements in the wake of other shootings at U.S. military bases, Hagel said, “Obviously when we have these kinds of tragedies on our bases, something’s not working.”

Information for this article was contributed by Paul J. Weber, Will Weissert, Ramit Plushnick-Masti, Lolita C. Baldor, Eric Tucker, Alicia Caldwell and Nedra Pickler of The Associated Press; by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Mark Berman, Ernesto Londono, Philip Rucker, Adam Goldman, Sari Horwitz, Craig Whitlock, Mark Berman, Carol D. Leonnig, Ernesto Londono, Clarence Williams and Julie Tate of The Washington Post; by Alison Vekshin, Angela Greiling Keane and Gopal Ratnam of Bloomberg News; by Alan Zarembo, Matt Pearce and Paresh Dave of the Los Angeles Times; and by Manny Fernandez, Ashley Southall,Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Eric Schmitt of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/03/2014

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