One dead, 14 injured in shooting at Fort Hood, U.S. official says
FORT HOOD, TEXAS—A senior U.S. defence official says one person is dead and 14 wounded in a shooting at the Army’s Fort Hood base in Texas.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the information publicly.
The base, the scene of a mass shooting in 2009, confirmed the Wednesday shooting in a brief statement posted online. The statement also said emergency crews were on the scene and that further details were not yet known.
The Bell’s County Sheriff’s Office dispatched deputies and troopers from the Texas Department of Public Safety to the nearby post after receiving reports of an “active shooter,” sheriff’s Lt. Donnie Adams said. FBI spokeswoman Michelle Lee said its agents were also headed to the scene.
On its Twitter feed and Facebook page, Fort Hood on Wednesday ordered everyone on base to “shelter in place.” The 1st Calvary Division, which is based at Fort Hood, sent a Twitter alert telling people on base to close doors and stay away from windows.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the president has been informed of the reports of a shooting at Fort Hood and will continue to receive updates as he attends a pair of Democratic Party fundraisers in Chicago.
Family members gathered near the main gate of the sprawling military base as a stream of police cars approached. 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 his company of about 140 soldiers was in formation on a training exercise when the order came 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.
As best he could tell, the shooting occurred about seven miles away from where he was, Bishop said.
He texted his wife, with whom he lives off base with his son, that he was OK.
In 2009, 13 people were killed and more than 30 wounded at Fort Hood in what was the deadliest attack on a domestic U.S. military installation in history.
Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan was convicted and sentenced to death last year in the Nov. 5, 2009, attack on his fellow soldiers as they waited inside a crowded building at Fort Hood. Soldiers there were waiting to get vaccines and routine paperwork after recently returning from deployments or while preparing to go to Afghanistan and Iraq.
According to testimony during Hasan’s trial last 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.
MORE TO COME
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