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Fort Hood Shooter May Have Been On FBI's Radar
By
John Del Signore
Published Nov 6, 2009
Modified Nov 6, 2009
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He reportedly changed into his military uniform before the shooting.
By
John Del Signore
Published Nov 6, 2009
Modified Nov 6, 2009
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The army psychiatrist who killed 13 people and wounded 31 at Fort Hood yesterday may have come to the attention of the FBI at least six months ago, because of Internet postings that discussed suicide bombings and other threats. One posting on the website Scribd was attributed to Nidal Hasan, but investigators have not yet been able to confirm that the writer is Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old who was apprehended after yesterday's massacre.
The Scribd posting argues that, "If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory." Maj. Hasan, a Muslim and the son of immigrant parents from a small Palestinian town near Jerusalem, is single and has no children. He was reportedly upset about his imminent deployment to Afghanistan or Iraq, and also disturbed by harassment from other soldiers about his faith. Now he's on a ventilator and unconscious, and the top commander at Fort Hood, Lt. Gen. Bob Cone, told reporters this morning that "his death is not imminent." Cone also said that Hasan yelled "Allahu Akbar!" before the shooting.
Lt. Cone also told the press that it was a female police officer who ultimately neutralized Hasan. Fort Hood police Sgt. Kimberly Munley and her partner responded within three minutes of reported gunfire yesterday, and Munley shot Hasan four times, despite being shot herself. She is in stable condition, and Cone said, "It was an amazing and an aggressive performance by this police officer."
CNN spoke with the owner of a 7-Eleven at Fort Hood where Maj. Hasan would regularly stop for coffee in the morning; surveillance footage from the store shows him wearing traditional Arab garb at 6:20 a.m. yesterday. The owner says, "He looked normal. Came in had his hash browns and coffee as you see in the surveillance video." But seven hours later he would open fire using two civilian handguns at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, where soldiers begin the process of vaccinations prior to deployment.
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army
Fort Hood
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan
massacre
nidal hasan
shooting
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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