Official: 1 dead, 14 injured in Fort Hood shooting
FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) — One person was killed and 14 injured in a shooting Wednesday at Fort Hood, and officials at the base said the shooter is believed to be dead.
The details about the number of people hurt came from a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the information publicly.
Fort Hood said in a statement posted online that its Directorate of Emergency Services had an initial report that the shooter was dead, but that the report was unconfirmed. Additional details were not immediately available.
The Army said on its official Twitter feed that the base is still on lockdown, and that injured personnel were being treated at the post's Carl R. Darnall Medical Center and other local hospitals.
The Texas Army base was the scene of a mass shooting in 2009. Thirteen people were killed and more than 30 wounded in what was the deadliest attack on a domestic 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.
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, according to 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, 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.
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Associated Press reporters Lolita C. Baldor in Honolulu and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.
