FBI: Shooting at Naval Station in Texas was ‘terrorism-related’

An attack involving a gunman who opened fire early Thursday at a gate of Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Texas was related to terrorism, the FBI said Thursday.

One member of the base’s security force suffered minor injuries in the shooting, and the gunman was killed, authorities said.

“We have determined that the incident this morning at the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi is terrorismrelated,” Leah Greeves, an FBI supervisory senior resident agent in Corpus Christi, said at a news conference.

Federal, state and local authorities were continuing to investigate the situation, which was “fluid and evolving,” she said. Authorities have not released the gunman’s name or described his motives.

“We may have a potential second related person of interest at large in the community, but we would encourage the public to remain calm,” Greeves said.

Around 6:15 a.m., a man in a vehicle approached the base’s North/Ocean Drive Gate and began firing at the guard, according to Francoise Kieschnick, a spokeswoman for the base.

The guard was injured but managed to stop the gunman by activating a “final denial barrier” that stops vehicles from crossing, Kieschnick said.

Base personnel returned fire, and the gunman was “neutralized,” Kieschnick said.

The injured guard was taken to a nearby hospital, deemed in good condition and released, the base said in a statement.

“No one else was hurt thanks to the great work of our first responders,” Kieschnick said.

The base was placed on lockdown for several hours, and the North/Ocean Drive Gate remained closed until further notice, the base said.

The Justice Department said Thursday that its counterterrorism section was working closely with the FBI, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas and other federal and local authorities to “expeditiously investigate the circumstances of this event and all available evidence, including electronic media found at the scene.”

The shooting came three days after the country’s top law enforcement officials said the gunman in last year’s deadly shooting at a naval air station in Pensacola, Florida, had regularly been in touch with al-Qaida for years, as recently as the night before the attack.

The FBI found that the gunman, 2nd Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a Saudi air force cadet training with the U.S. military in Pensacola, had communicated with leaders of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and had joined the Saudi military to carry out a “special operation,” Attorney General William Barr said at a news conference Monday.

Naval Air Station Corpus Christi has been home to naval pilot training since 1941, according to its website. It houses Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and foreign student pilots.