Gunman kills three,
Wounds 16 after opening fire at army base in Fort Hood, Tex.
FORT HOOD, TEX. — U.S. President Barack Obama sought to reassure a nation whose sense of security again was shaken by mass violence Wednesday as a soldier killed three people and injured 16 then committed suicide in a shooting Wednesday at the Fort Hood army base.
The shooter was a soldier who served in Iraq in 2011 and had been undergoing an assessment to determine whether he had post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Lt. Gen. Mark A. Milley, the senior officer on the base.
There was no indication the attack was related to terrorism, Milley said.
A Texas congressman said the shooting happened at a medical centre. Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, also identified the suspect as Ivan Lopez. But additional details about the gunman were not immediately available. Milley said all the wounded were military members.
In a hastily arranged statement, Obama said he and his team were following the situation closely, but that details about what happened at the sprawling Army post were still fluid. He said the shooting brought back painful memories of the 2009 shooting at the base that claimed 13 lives.
Obama reflected on the sacrifices that troops stationed at Fort Hood have made — including during multiple tours to Iraq and Afghanistan.
“They serve with valour, they serve with distinction and when they’re at their home base they need to feel safe,” Obama said. “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 Chicago steak house where he had just met with about 25 donors at a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee.
Obama vowed that investigators would get to the bottom of the shooting.
The injured were taken to a hospital at Fort Hood and other local hospitals.
Dr. Glen Couchman, chief medical officer at Scott and White Hospital in Temple, said the first four people admitted had gunshots to the chest, abdomen, neck and extremities and that their conditions ranged from stable to “quite critical.”
The military offered few details on the attack. After the shooting began, the army’s official Twitter feed said the post had been locked down. Hours later, all-clear sirens sounded.
On Wednesday evening, a fatigue-clad soldier and a military police officer stood about a half-kilometre from the main gate waving away traffic. Other lanes were blocked by a police car and van.
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-racking 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.
Brooke Conover, whose husband was on base at the time of the shooting, said she found out about it while checking Facebook. She said she called her husband, Staff Sgt. Sean Conover, immediately to make sure he was OK, but he could not even tell her exactly what was going on, only that the base was locked down.
“I’m still hearing conflicting stories about what happened and where the shooting was exactly,” Conover said, explaining that she still did not know how close the incident was to her husband.
The shooting brought back memories of another shooting on base in 2009, when 13 people were killed in the deadliest attack on a domestic military installation in U.S. history.
Since 1982, there have been at least 67 mass shootings across the U.S., according to research by Mother Jones. The killings have taken place in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii.
Thirty of the mass shootings have occurred since 2006, and seven of them happened in 2012.