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Aaron
ALEXIS
Washington Navy Yard shooting
It was the second-deadliest mass murder on a U.S.
military base after the Fort Hood shooting in November 2009.
Prior to shooting
Aaron Alexis, the perpetrator, arrived in the
Washington, D.C., area on or around August 25, 2013, and stayed at
various hotels. At the time of the massacre, he had been staying
at a Residence Inn hotel in southwest Washington since September
7. He was
working for a subcontractor on a Hewlett-Packard Enterprise
Services contract and staying with five other civilian
contractors.
On Saturday, September 14, two days before the massacre, Alexis
visited the Sharpshooters Small Arms Range in Lorton, Virginia, 15
miles (24 km) south of Washington. He tested out an AR-15
semi-automatic rifle but did not seek to buy it, a lawyer for the
store said.
Initial reports indicated that one may have been used in the
Washington Navy Yard shootings. Instead, after purchasing
ammunition and test-firing the AR-15, Alexis inquired about buying
a handgun at the range, according to an attorney for the store.
However, since federal law does not allow dealers to sell directly
to out-of-state residents, and the gun would have been shipped to
a licensed dealer in his home state, Alexis then selected a
Remington 870 Express 12-gauge shotgun, since rifles and shotguns
may be directly sold to out-of-state residents, and bought it
along with two boxes of shells containing about 24 rounds, after
passing a state and federal background check.
Shooting
Sometime before 8:20 a.m. on September 16, Alexis arrived at
the Navy Yard in a rental car, using a valid pass to enter the
Yard. He entered Building 197 carrying the disassembled shotgun
(the barrel and stock of which had been sawed off) in a bag on his
shoulder. He assembled the shotgun inside a bathroom on the fourth
floor, then emerged with the gun and began shooting. Many of the
people shot on the fourth floor were shot at close range in the
head.
He then continued firing on the third floor and the lobby. At
some point, Alexis shot and killed a security officer and took the
officer's Beretta 9mm semiautomatic pistol, using it after running
out of ammunition for his shotgun. Initial reports that Alexis
claimed most of his victims by firing from a fourth-floor walkway
onto people entering a first-floor cafeteria were later stated to
be incorrect.
At 8:23 a.m., the first calls to 9-1-1 were made. Six minutes
later, a four-person active-shooter response team was deployed
into the building. Around that time, Alexis was still firing shots
on both the third and fourth floors.
A NAVSEA employee described encountering a gunman wearing
all-blue clothing in a third-floor hallway, saying, "He just
turned and started firing." At one point during the shooting, one
man was hit by a "stray bullet" in an alleyway.
As D.C. police responded within seven minutes of the first
shootings, Alexis opened fire on them, hitting an officer, Scott
Williams, in the leg. He engaged several law enforcement personnel
in a gunfight that lasted for more than 30 minutes. At around 9:20
a.m., Alexis was fatally shot in the head by police on the third
floor; his death was later confirmed at 11:50 a.m.
Victims
There were 13 fatalities. The suspect and 11 of
the victims were killed at the scene, while a 12th victim who was
shot in the head, 61-year-old Vishnu Pandit, died at George
Washington University Hospital. All the victims killed were
civilian employees or contractors. Eight others were injured,
three of them from gunfire. The survivors wounded by gunshots
(police officer Scott Williams and two female civilians) were in
critical condition at Washington Hospital Center.
Fatalities
1.- Michael Arnold, age 59
2.- Martin Bodrog, age 53
3.- Arthur Daniels, age 51
4.- Sylvia Frasier, age 53
5.- Kathy Gaarde, age 62
6.- John Roger Johnson, age 73
7.- Mary Francis Knight, age 51
8.- Frank Kohler, age 50
9.- Vishnu Pandit, age 61
10.- Kenneth Bernard Proctor, age 46
11.- Gerald Read, age 58
12.- Richard Michael Ridgell, age 52
Perpetrator
Aaron Alexis (May 9, 1979 – September 16,
2013), a 34-year-old civilian contractor, was identified by police
as the sole gunman. Alexis was slain in a gunfight with police.
Born in the New York City borough of Queens,
Alexis grew up in Brooklyn and was a resident of Fort Worth,
Texas. He joined the United States Navy in 2007, and served in
Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 46 at Naval Air Station Joint
Reserve Base Fort Worth. His rating was aviation electrician's
mate and he had attained the rank of petty officer third class
when he was honorably discharged from the Navy on January 31,
2011, although the Navy originally intended for him to receive a
general discharge.
According to a Navy official, Alexis was cited
on at least eight occasions for misconduct. In 2010, he was
arrested in Fort Worth for discharging a weapon within city
limits. Alexis was also arrested in Seattle, Washington, in 2004
for malicious mischief, after shooting out the tires of another
man's vehicle in what he later described as the result of an
anger-fueled "blackout"; and in 2008 in DeKalb County, Georgia,
for disorderly conduct. Authorities did not prosecute Alexis for
the Seattle and Fort Worth cases.
From September 2012 to January 2013, Alexis
worked in Japan, "refreshing computer systems" on the Navy Marine
Corps Intranet network for a HP Enterprise Services subcontracting
company called The Experts.
After returning from Japan, he expressed
frustration to a former roommate that he hadn't been paid properly
for the work he performed. Another roommate of Alexis said that he
would frequently complain about being the victim of
discrimination. In July 2013, he resumed working for The Experts
in the United States.
At the time of his death, Alexis was working
online on a bachelor's degree in aeronautics from Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University. He had tried Buddhist meditation for some
time to control his mental illness. Alexis had been suffering from
some serious mental issues, including paranoia and a sleep
disorder, as well as hearing voices. Since August 2013, he had
been treated by the Veterans Administration for mental problems.
Members of his family also told investigators that Alexis was
being treated for mental issues. In August, he had been prescribed
trazodone, a generic antidepressant that is widely prescribed for
insomnia.
Reports of other shooters
On the day of the shooting, Washington Chief of
Police Cathy L. Lanier initially said that police were searching
for a white male wearing khaki military fatigues and a beret, who
had allegedly been seen with a handgun, and a black male wearing
olive military fatigues and carrying a long gun. The white male
was later identified and deemed not to be a suspect. The black
male was not identified. At 7:00 p.m., officials ruled out the
possibility of other shooters besides Alexis, but were still
seeking one person for possible involvement.
Security precautions
On September 16, many roadways and bridges were
temporarily closed, and flights out of Ronald Reagan Washington
National Airport were temporarily suspended. Eight schools were
locked down. Shortly after 3:00 p.m., United States Senate
buildings went on lock-down for about an hour "out of an abundance
of caution", according to the Senate Sergeant at Arms. The
Washington Nationals baseball team postponed their scheduled
evening game, owing to the proximity of Nationals Park to the Navy
Yard area.
The Navy Yard reopened and resumed usual
operations on Thursday, September 19. Building 197 will remain
closed indefinitely.
Reactions
United States President Barack Obama pledged to
ensure the perpetrators would be held responsible. On the day
of the shooting, Obama ordered flags flown at half-staff until
sunset on September 20 at the White House, all public buildings
and all military and naval posts, stations and vessels. On
September 17, Department of Defense officials laid a wreath at the
Navy Memorial plaza in honor of the victims. President Obama
attended a memorial service for the victims on September 22.
A
day after the shooting, Thomas Hoshko, the CEO of the company
Alexis worked for, stated in an email sent to Navy Secretary Ray
Mabus that he was "dramatically" affected by the shootings, adding,
"[M]y heart and prayers go out to the families and friends of
those innocent victims."
The shooting sparked a discussion on the
adequacy of security at U.S. military facilities. On September 18, Defense Secretary
Chuck Hagel ordered a review of security procedures at military
facilities around the world. Foreign Policy magazine reported
that virtually anyone with a Common Access Card (C.A.C.), provided
to government contractors, civilian Defense Department employees,
and soldiers, can enter many military facilities "without being
patted down or made to go through a metal detector".
Aaron
Alexis had a Secret-level security clearance and a C.A.C. allowing
him to enter the Navy Yard. Alex Jones, Ted Nugent, Jim Treacher
and others commented that "gun free zones" on military bases were
to blame. While there is a law banning personal firearms on
military bases, armed personnel were on guard at the time of the
shooting.
On September 17, gun control activists and
relatives of victims of shootings that occurred at Sandy Hook
Elementary School, Aurora, Colorado, and the Oak Creek, Wisconsin
Sikh temple, went to Washington to protest for stricter gun
control. The activists said they hoped that due to the Navy Yard's
proximity to Capitol Hill, that it would motivate lawmakers to act
to impose stricter background checks and prevent loopholes that
enable people to purchase guns at gun shows without any background
checks.
BBC.co.uk
September 23, 2013
President Barack Obama has renewed calls for
changes to US gun laws at a memorial service for the victims of
last week's shooting at the Washington Navy Yard.
Mr Obama said tears were "not enough".
The president told mourners Americans must
insist that "there is nothing normal about innocent men and women
being gunned down where they work".
Twelve people were killed last Monday by
contractor Aaron Alexis, who was himself shot dead by police.
The 34-year-old reportedly had untreated mental
health difficulties.
'Difficult politics'
Mr Obama called on Americans to abandon their
"creeping resignation" to mass shootings.
Acknowledging that "the politics are difficult"
- a reference to his failure to get measures through Congress
earlier this year - the president said change would not come from
Washington.
"Change will come the only way it ever has
come, and that's from the American people," Mr Obama told the
crowd.
He noted that this was the fifth time he had
spoken at a memorial event for victims of a mass shooting since
the start of his presidency.
After the massacre at the Sandy Hook elementary
school in Connecticut last December, the president sought to
introduce expanded background checks for buyers of guns, and to
re-introduce an expired ban on military-style assault weapons.
Those measures have effectively died in the
Senate, as they will not get the 60 votes needed to pass.
United Nations statistics show the US has a
much higher rate of firearm-related murder than other developed
nations.
'Not just statistics'
Mr Obama and his wife Michelle met privately
with victims' relatives ahead of the shooting memorial, the White
House said.
The BBC's correspondent in Washington, Katy
Watson, reports that as well as using the speech to address the
issue of gun crime, the president talked in detail about the
victims' lives and families.
He wanted to make sure these people were
remembered for who they were, not just gun crime statistics, our
correspondent says.
Navy yard gunman given security clearance
despite 'lie' about arrest
Aaron Alexis, who shot dead 12, was given
secret-level security clearance despite omission from application
form
By Paul Lewis - TheGuardian.com
September 23, 2013
Aaron Alexis, the former US navy reservist who
shot dead 12 employees at a Washington military base last week,
was granted a secret-level security clearance even after an FBI
database search revealed he had apparently lied on his application
form, about an arrest.
An internal inquiry has established that when
Alexis first enlisted, in June 2007, he declared on a security
questionnaire that he had never been arrested. However, a
fingerprint check on an FBI database revealed that he had been
arrested three years previously, in Seattle.
He was still granted a special security
clearance, after attending an interview and claiming that he did
not think he needed to declare the arrest. Alexis provided only a
partial explanation of the incident in Seattle, in which he is now
known to have used a gun to shoot the tyres of car belonging to a
construction worker.
A summary of the quick-turnaround navy inquiry
– one of three internal reviews announced after Alexis's killing
spree at the Washington navy yard seven days ago – was provided to
reporters by a navy official on Monday. The official was not
authorised to go on the record because he was providing a detailed
breakdown of Alexis's time in the military, between 2007 and 2011.
Defence officials have previously acknowledged
that several "red flags" were missed in Alexis's background,
allowing him to achieve and retain a secret security clearance and
work as a navy contractor despite a string of police-related and
behavioral problems.
The inquiry raises questions for both the navy,
which granted Alexis security-level clearance, and the Office of
Personnel Management (OPM), the federal agency responsible for
conducting background checks on government workers. It was
revealed last week that OPM had contracted out at least one of
Alexis's background checks to USIS, a Virginia-based company.
The assessment of Alexis's suitability for
security clearance appears to have overlooked the crucial details
of the incident in Seattle, which occurred in 2004. Alexis later
told police he had shot the tyres of the construction worker's car
after an "anger-fuelled" blackout. He was charged with malicious
mischief, but the charge was later dismissed.
The Seattle police report which documented the
incident did not feature in the OPM investigation, which was
triggered after the FBI database revealed that Alexis had been
arrested over an incident he failed to declare on his security
questionnaire. Instead, it appears to have been based primarily
upon an account of the Seattle incident provided by Alexis after
he was called to an interview to explain himself. Detailing
Alexis's side of the story, the OPM report says Alexis had an
altercation with the construction worker "and retaliated by
deflating [his] tyres". There is no mention of him having used a
firearm.
In his interview, Alexis said he had chosen not
to declare the arrest in Seattle on his application form, as
required, because the charge had by then been dismissed. He also
said his lawyer in Seattle had told him the incident would be
removed from his record. However, one question on the application
form specifically asks whether an individual has been arrested in
the previous seven years, irrespective of charge or conviction.
"The subject committed this offense because he
was retaliating for being intimidated by the male person," the OPM
report concluded. "The subject does not intend to repeat this type
of behavior because he would avoid any confrontation and notify
authorities if a similar situation were to occur in the future."
Months later, after reviewing that OPM report –
but not the Seattle police report – the navy granted Alexis
secret-level security clearance. There was no reference to the
shooting incident, or to the the failure by Alexis to declare his
arrest. The only caveat to the security clearance was a reference
to his poor credit history.
Although Alexis's work in Fleet Logistics
Support Squadron 46 did not require secret-level security
clearance, new recruits are often put through the process in case
they should need it in the future. Military security clearances of
the kind granted to Alexis are primarily designed to detect
whether a recruit is susceptible to disloyalty or bribery from an
enemy force.
The clearance lasted 10 years and therefore
applied when, in 2012, a year after leaving the navy reserves,
Alexis obtained a job as an IT contractor working on navy
installations. The official who briefed reporters on Monday said
he could not say "definitively" whether Alexis would have been
denied a secret-level clearance had the navy known that he had
lied in in his application.
The navy official said the police report of the
incident in Seattle and the version produced by the OPM after
interviewing Alexis "depict two very different events". The
inquiry has recommended that all future OPM background checks
"include any available police documents", rather than simply
relying on the account given by the person applying for clearance.
The inquiry, which was into Alexis's service
record and performance during his three years in the navy, also
established that his commander was on the cusp of throwing him out
of the navy in late 2010, after he was arrested over a second
firearm incident, in which he fired a bullet into the apartment of
a neighbour in Fort Worth, Texas, after a dispute over noise.
Alexis's commander's legal officer wrote up a
memo recommending Alexis be removed from the navy, but the letter
was shelved after a decision not to bring charges against him.
Alexis had told police he had discharged his gun by accident while
cleaning it.
Alexis left the navy of his own accord. He
requested to leave the toward the end of 2010, under a scheme
designed to downsize sections of the military considered to be
overmanned. He was honorably discharged in January 2011, after
telling commanders he wanted to go to college.
Escape from the navy yard: 'We realised we
had to get out of the building'
Bertillia Lavern gives detailed account of
attack from inside the compound – where one of her friends was
shot in the head
TheGuardian.com
September 20, 2013
The first bang sounded distant and muffled. On
the fourth floor, Bertillia Lavern assumed somebody downstairs was
setting up for an event and had dropped a folding table.
But when the bangs kept coming, Lavern
recognized the sounds.
Years earlier, before taking a civilian office
job at naval sea systems headquarters, Lavern was a navy medical
specialist. Known as a corpsman, she'd been on training operations
with the marines. She knew the snap of gunfire.
The 39-year-old hit the ground and scurried
under a desk with her supervisor in a nearby cubicle, she said.
They stayed there silently as the shots continued.
From that vantage point, the building's open
floor plan allowed her to view the fifth floor, where she saw
someone moving.
"Get down!" she screamed, emerging from her
hiding place.
She remembers her supervisor, Andy Kelly,
making the same demand of her. And she remembers a bright flash of
light.
"Glass shattered right by my head," she told
the Associated Press in a phone interview on Thursday. "It was on
the edge of Andy's cubicle."
Lavern's account is the most detailed yet by
someone who was inside the navy yard when former navy reservist
Aaron Alexis, a contractor who had worked at the navy yard for
less than a month, shot and killed 12 civilians on Monday before
being killed by police.
Lavern said she and Kelly ducked down again and
waited for a break in the shooting.
"We realized then we had to get out of the
building," she said. "Andy looked around the corner to check that
the coast was clear."
Lavern crawled to her desk to grab her
identification badge and her purse. From there she saw her
colleague, Vishnu Pandit.
"He was down."
Pandit, 61, had spent 30 years with the navy.
Known to his coworkers as Kisan, he had two sons and was a
grandfather and lived in North Potomac, Md. He was the first
person she greeted at the office each morning. And he had been
shot in his left temple.
Using tissues from his desk, Lavern pressed her
hand against her friend's head. She held him there and prayed over
him.
"I felt him breathe," she said.
She felt for his pulse. Amazingly, it was
strong.
She turned to Kelly: "We need help now!"
Kelly ran for help and Lavern stayed behind,
she said. She did not know where the gunman was.
"Stay with me," she said. "I'm right here."
She told him that God loved him, that his
friends loved him, that they wanted him to stay with them.
"We don't want you to go," she told him.
Three security guards arrived. They carried
Pandit to an office chair, rolled him to the stairs and strapped
him into an evacuation chair used to help disabled people quickly
escape.
But it wouldn't roll.
"We lifted, dragged the chair down the stairs."
At every floor, she said, she checked his
pulse. It remained strong.
When they got to the second floor, she said,
the security guards' radios came to life: "The shooter was on the
first floor," she said. "On the west side."
Exactly where they were heading.
They continued downstairs and escaped through a
side door, where she said they found a security guard in an
unmarked car.
A gunman was on the loose and the security
guard was worried about leaving his post. Still, he took Lavern
and Pandit into the car and raced off. They made it off the
grounds of the navy yard and to a street corner a few blocks away.
The security guard needed to get back to his post and asked police
who were there to get an ambulance immediately.
Lavern eased her friend to the pavement. His
pulse was gone.
Across the street, James Birdsall was having
his morning coffee in his office on the 11th floor at Parsons, an
engineering company. As he and his colleagues watched the police
cars screaming toward the navy yard, Birdsall noticed a man lying
down on the street corner below at New Jersey Avenue and M Street.
Birdsall assumed someone had had a heart
attack. His company had trained him to use a defibrillator but the
man was all the way across the street and there was already a
woman giving CPR.
"But I thought, 'If don't do this now, I'm
going to look back and say I should have,'" Birdsall said
Thursday.
So he grabbed the defibrillator and ran. The
11-floor elevator ride seemed to take especially long. The run
through the lobby and across the intersection remain a blur.
Birdsall knelt at Pandit's head while Lavern
pumped at his chest. That image was among the first to surface
from the navy yard shooting Monday in a photo that was taken by
congressional staffer Don Andres and circulated on Twitter by Tim
Hogan, a spokesman for congressman Steve Horsford, Nevada.
Almost immediately, there were questions about
what it showed. Was it really a shooting victim? If so, how did he
get blocks from the scene? There was speculation that someone had
a heart attack, unrelated to the chaos blocks away.
But Birdsall saw the gunshot wound to Pandit's
head. He attached the defibrillator's two pads to the man's chest.
The machine said not to administer a shock,
Lavern said. So she continued giving CPR.
Others came to help and Lavern kept talking to
her friend. Birdsall could tell that from the way she kept saying
his name that she knew him well.
Within two minutes of being dispatched, an
ambulance arrived. Lavern asked to go to the hospital with him but
a detective told her she needed to give a police report instead.
She removed Pandit's badge and gave it to rescue workers so they
would know who he was.
The Associated Press had distributed two photos
Andres took on Monday but hours later withdrew the photos until it
could be verified they were related to the navy yard shootings.
The AP reissued the photos along with this story.
Pandit was pronounced dead on arrival at George
Washington University Hospital, where Dr Babak Sarani, the
hospital's director of trauma and acute care surgery, called the
injury "not survivable."
Lavern, a mother of one from Stafford,
Virginia, attended Pandit's funeral on Thursday.
"He was a good friend," she said. "He was the
sweetest man."
Her husband, navy lieutenant commander Randall
Lavern, said he wasn't surprised at her actions.
"That's my wife," he said. "She's always the
one running to help."
By Kyle Eppler, Pete Williams and Erin McClam -
NBCNews.com
September 19, 2013
The Washington Navy Yard reopened early
Thursday, three days after gunman Aaron Alexis killed 12 people
and wounded several others in a shooting rampage at the
Washington, D.C., base.
The gates at the Navy installation reopened at
6 a.m. Thursday, according to the Associated Press.
Thursday will be a standard work day, excluding
Building 197, where the horrific shootings took place, and the
base gym, Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Sarah Flaherty told the
Associated Press. The gym will be used as a staging area for the
FBI to probe Monday's massacre, she added.
Authorities say they are still looking for a
motive. Since Alexis carried out the attack Monday at the
headquarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command, signs have emerged
of his troubled history, including a military disciplinary record
and reports he suffered from depression and paranoia.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Wednesday
that "obviously there were a lot of red flags" in Alexis' past,
including reports that he had complained of insomnia and sought
treatment at a VA hospital emergency room, and that the department
would look into why they were not picked up.
Alexis was purportedly suffering from insomnia
during an Aug. 23 emergency room visit to the VA Medical Center in
Providence, R.I., where he was given sleep medication and told to
follow up with a doctor, according to the AP.
Five days later, he visited the VA Hospital in
Washington, where he said he hadn't been able to sleep due to his
work schedule, and again had his medication refilled, according to
the wire service.
He seemed "alert and oriented" during those
visits and claimed that he didn't feel depressed, anxious or prone
to violence, the VA said in a statement provided to legislators
Wednesday, according to the AP.
But just two weeks before his emergency room
stay, Alexis complained to Rhode Island police that people were
communicating to him via the walls and ceilings of his hotel room
and transmitting microwave vibrations into his body to keep him
from falling asleep.
Newport authorities reported the incident to
offers at the base security office, Navy officials said, but there
was no follow-through because Alexis didn't appear to pose a
threat to himself or others at the time, according to the AP.
President Barack Obama plans to attend a
memorial service for the Navy Yard victims Sunday, the White House
press secretary said.
The mother of Aaron Alexis, the Washington Navy
Yard shooter, said Wednesday that she was heartbroken and sorry
for the families of the victims and that she was glad he is "in a
place where he can no longer do harm to anyone."
In a brief statement to a reporter in New York,
the woman, Cathleen Alexis, said her son "has murdered 12 people
and wounded several others."
"His actions have had a profound and
everlasting effect on the families of the victims," she said, her
voice trembling. "I don't know why he did what he did, and I'll
never be able to ask him why. Aaron is now in a place where he can
no longer do harm to anyone, and for that I am glad."
She added: "To the families of the victims, I
am so, so very sorry that this has happened. My heart is broken."
Earlier in the day, a woman whom Aaron Alexis
stayed with in Thailand last year said that he was crazy "in a
positive way, like funny," and that she was shocked to learn that
he had carried out the massacre at the Navy Yard. The spree ended
when Alexis was gunned down by officers.
The woman, Om Suthamtewakul, is the sister of a
former roommate of Alexis' in the U.S. She told NBC News in an
interview that Alexis stayed with her for a month and a half and
showed no sign of anger.
"So I can't really believe how he can shoot
those people," she said in Thai. "He looked kind of like, you
know, bonkers, crazy, in a positive way, like funny, but, so I
really can't believe this."
Suthamtewakul said Alexis liked her country,
"loved Thai woman" and wanted to go back. She said that she and
Alexis went on outings in Bangkok and elsewhere and that they went
to massage parlors in the evening.
She said she never saw him show cruelty.
"Every day he has good mood, laughing," she
said, "and one time we went to the market together because he
understand Thai and he heard one Thai woman saying rude words
about him — but he didn't get angry, he laughed and told the
woman, 'I understand what you said.'"
Jeff Black, Tracy Connor, Jason Cumming,
Jonathan Dienst, Richard Esposito, Courtney Kube, Charles Hadlock,
Peter Jeary, Jim Miklaszewski, Andrew Rafferty, Marian Smith,
Daniel Arkin and Ali Weinberg of NBC News contributed to this
report.
By Manny Fernandez - The New York Times
September 17, 2013
HOUSTON — Aaron Alexis, 34, the man killed by
police officers and identified as the gunman in the deadly rampage
at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday, served his country as a
Navy reservist, had an abiding interest in Buddhism and Thai
culture, and had problems with the law, records and interviews
show.
In 2004, according to a Seattle police report,
Mr. Alexis walked out of his grandmother’s home one morning,
pulled a .45-caliber pistol from his waistband and fired three
rounds at a construction worker’s car, two at the rear tires and
one into the air.
A construction manager told the police he
thought Mr. Alexis was frustrated with the parking situation
outside the work site. But Mr. Alexis told the police that he had
had an anger-fueled blackout and could not remember firing the
weapon until about an hour after the episode. He said he was in
New York during the Sept. 11 attacks, and described to a detective
“how those events had disturbed him,” according to the detective’s
report. His father told investigators that Mr. Alexis had problems
associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, and had been an
“active participant” in rescue attempts on Sept. 11. Mr. Alexis’s
father could not be reached for comment Monday.
Anthony Little, Mr. Alexis’s brother-in-law,
told reporters Monday in Brooklyn that it had been five years
since his wife, Naomi Alexis, had spoken to her brother. “No one
saw it coming, no one knew anything, so all of this is just
shocking,” he said.
Law enforcement officials said the motive
behind the navy yard shooting remained unclear.
Mr. Alexis was born in Queens in 1979 and was
representative of the borough’s diversity. He was
African-American, grew up in a part of Queens that was home to
South Asians, Hispanics and Orthodox Jews, and embraced all things
Thai while living in Fort Worth. He worked as a waiter at a Thai
restaurant, studied the language and regularly chanted and
meditated at Buddhist temples.
From 2007 to 2011, Mr. Alexis was a full-time
reservist in the Navy, serving as an aviation electricians’ mate
and achieving the rank of petty officer third class. For much of
that time, from February 2008 to January 2011, when he left the
service, he was assigned to the Fleet Logistics Support Squadron
46, in Fort Worth, Navy officials said. His specialty was fixing
electrical systems on airplanes.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said on CNN that Mr.
Alexis was in “the ready reserve,” meaning he did not have
day-to-day contact with the Navy, but, if called upon, “he would
be one of the ones mobilized.” Mr. Alexis was awarded the National
Defense Service Medal and the Global War on Terrorism Service
Medal, two standard military honors, but there were indications
that he struggled in the Navy.
During his time in the service, he exhibited “a
pattern of misbehavior,” Navy officials said, though they declined
to elaborate. Upon leaving, he became a Navy contractor. At the
time of the shooting, Mr. Alexis worked for a company affiliated
with Hewlett-Packard that serviced the Navy’s Internet system,
Hewlett-Packard said in a statement. He had been living for weeks
in a long-term-stay hotel with colleagues to work on the Navy Yard
project, according to a government official.
In 2010, Mr. Alexis was arrested in Fort Worth
for discharging a firearm. At the time, Mr. Alexis had been living
in an apartment complex called Orion at Oak Hill. His upstairs
neighbor called the police after she heard a pop, saw dust fly and
noticed holes in her floor and ceiling. She told the police that
Mr. Alexis had confronted her in the parking lot about making too
much noise, and she felt threatened by him, according to the Fort
Worth police report.
Mr. Alexis later told an officer that he had
been cleaning his gun while cooking, and that the gun had
accidentally discharged. The officer asked him why he did not call
the police or check on the resident above him, and he replied that
he did not think the bullet went through because he could not see
any light through the hole, according to the report. The officer
noted that the gun was taken apart and covered in oil.
James Rotter, the father of the woman in the
apartment, said the shot came through close to where his daughter
had been sitting. She moved out after the episode, and a lawyer
advised the family not to press charges.
“How could you prove he did it on purpose when
he claimed he was cleaning his gun?” Mr. Rotter said.
In recent years, Mr. Alexis dated a Thai woman
and began showing up regularly at Wat Busayadhammavanara, a
Buddhist Temple in White Settlement, Tex., a Fort Worth suburb. He
had Thai friends, adored Thai food and said he always felt drawn
to the culture, said Pat Pundisto, a member of the temple
answering the phone there on Monday. He was a regular at Sunday
services, intoning Buddhist chants and staying to meditate
afterward. On celebrations like the Thai New Year in April, he
helped out, serving guests dressed in ceremonial Thai garb the
temple provided.
At the temple, he met Nutpisit Suthamtewakul,
who went on to open the Happy Bowl Thai restaurant in White
Settlement in 2011, said the restaurant owner’s cousin, Naree
Wilton, 51, in a phone interview. Mr. Alexis helped out at the
restaurant in exchange for food and a room in Mr. Suthamtewakul’s
house.
There, he played computer games “at the
nighttime and all day,” Ms. Wilton said, on one of three computers
he kept in his room, driving up the house’s electricity bills.
After he got a job fixing computers, the family asked him to help
out with utility bills. He rarely paid and borrowed money often,
Ms. Wilton said, complaining that his computer company was
withholding pay.
Reporting was contributed by Joseph Goldstein,
Erica Goode, Nate Schweber and Vivian Yee from New York; Sarah
Maslin Nir from Washington; and Lauren D’Avolio from Fort Worth.
By Michael D. Shear and Michael S. Schmidt -
The New York Times
September 16, 2013
WASHINGTON — A former Navy reservist killed at
least 12 people on Monday in a mass shooting at a secure military
facility that led the authorities to lock down part of the
nation’s capital — even after the gunman was killed — in a hunt
for two other armed men spotted by video cameras, officials said.
But by Monday evening, the federal authorities
said they believed the shooting was the act of a lone gunman,
identified as Aaron Alexis, 34, who was working for a military
subcontractor.
The chaos at the facility, the Washington Navy
Yard, started just after 8 a.m. Civilian employees described a
scene of confusion as shots erupted through the hallways of the
Naval Sea Systems Command headquarters, on the banks of the
Anacostia River a few miles from the White House and about a
half-mile from the Capitol.
“I heard three gunshots, pow, pow, pow,
straight in a row,” said Patricia Ward, a logistics management
specialist from Woodbridge, Va., who was in the cafeteria on the
first floor when the shooting started. “About three seconds later,
there were four more gunshots, and all of the people in the
cafeteria were panicking, trying to figure out which way we were
going to run out.”
Police officers who swarmed the military
facility exchanged fire with Mr. Alexis, 34, a former naval
reservist in Fort Worth. Police officers shot Mr. Alexis to death,
law enforcement officials said, but not before a dozen people were
killed and several others, including a city police officer, were
wounded and taken to local hospitals.
Officials said Mr. Alexis drove a rental car to
the base and entered using his access as a contractor and shot an
officer and one other person outside Building 197, the Sea Systems
Command headquarters. Inside, Mr. Alexis made his way to a floor
overlooking an atrium and took aim at employees eating breakfast
below.
“He was shooting down from above the people,”
one law enforcement official said. “That is where he does most of
his damage.”
The names of seven of the victims were released
late Monday: Michael Arnold, 59; Sylvia Frasier, 53; Kathy Gaarde,
62; John Roger Johnson, 73; Frank Kohler, 50; Kenneth Bernard
Proctor, 46; and Vishnu Pandit, 61. Officials said names of the
other victims would be released after their families had been
contacted. All of the victims were believed to be civilians or
contractors. No active duty military personnel were killed, said
Chief Cathy L. Lanier of Washington.
One victim was shot in the left temple and was
pronounced dead within a minute of arriving at George Washington
University Hospital. “This injury was not survivable by any
stretch,” a hospital official told reporters. “The patient was
dead on the way to the hospital.”
Eight people were injured. Three of them were
shot, including Officer Scott Williams of the Washington police.
The others suffered injuries from falls or complained of chest
pains. Officer Williams, who served in the canine unit, underwent
several hours of surgery for gunshot wounds to his legs. A second
victim suffered a gunshot wound to her shoulder. A bullet grazed a
third victim’s head but did not penetrate her skull, according to
doctors at MedStar Washington Hospital Center.
Three weapons were found on Mr. Alexis: an
AR-15 assault rifle, a shotgun and a semiautomatic pistol, a
senior law enforcement officer said. It was unclear whether he had
brought all the guns with him, another law enforcement official
said, or if he had taken one or more of them from his victims.
Officials said they were still searching for a
motive as they asked the public for help by posting pictures of
Mr. Alexis on the F.B.I. Web site. The agency is treating the
shooting as a criminal investigation, not one related to
terrorism.
Navy officials said late Monday that Mr. Alexis
had worked as a contractor in information technology. A spokesman
for Hewlett-Packard said Mr. Alexis had been an employee of a
company called The Experts, a subcontractor on an HP Enterprise
Services contract.
Navy officials said Mr. Alexis was given a
general discharge in 2011 after exhibiting a “pattern of
misbehavior,” which officials declined to detail. The year before,
Mr. Alexis was arrested in Fort Worth for discharging a firearm
after an upstairs neighbor said he had confronted her in the
parking lot about making too much noise, according to a Fort Worth
police report.
The police in Seattle, where Mr. Alexis once
lived, said Monday that they had arrested him in 2004 for shooting
the tires of another man’s vehicle in what Mr. Alexis later
described to detectives as an anger-fueled “blackout.”
Eleanor Holmes Norton, the Congressional
delegate from the District of Columbia, called the episode “an
attack on our city.”
“It’s an attack on our country,” she added.
Mayor Vincent C. Gray called it a “long, tragic
day.” President Obama praised the victims of the shooting as
patriots.
The tension in the city was heightened for much
of the day as the police said they were unsure whether Mr. Alexis
had acted alone. Officials said surveillance video of people
fleeing the scene of the shooting showed two armed men dressed in
different military uniforms and wielding guns. For hours, the
police said they believed that there might have been three gunmen
and that two of them were on the loose in the city.
The reports of multiple suspects generated
confusion across Washington as the authorities offered conflicting
messages about any continuing danger. Officials did not move to
secure the city, leaving the city’s subway system to operate
normally. But out of an “abundance of caution,” Terrance W.
Gainer, the Senate sergeant-at-arms, put the Senate complex into
lockdown after 3 p.m. The Senate had recessed in the early
afternoon.
Around the same time, the Washington Nationals
postponed a game against the division-leading Atlanta Braves,
which had been scheduled for 7 p.m. at Nationals Park, next to the
navy yard. The Nationals’ Web site said “Postponed: Tragedy” and
notified fans that the teams would play a doubleheader on Tuesday
instead.
The city was further shaken Monday evening when
someone tossed firecrackers over the fence at the White House,
causing loud bangs and prompting a swift and aggressive response
from Secret Service agents, who tackled a man in white shorts and
a T-shirt on Pennsylvania Avenue.
The morning was drizzly at the navy yard, which
sits at one end of the 11th Street Bridge, a major thoroughfare
bringing traffic into the city from Maryland.
Within minutes of the first reports of shots,
hundreds of police officers and naval officers surrounded the
Naval Sea Systems Command headquarters, where about 3,000 service
members, civilians and contractors work on the Navy’s fleet.
Military helicopters circled the facility as police vehicles and
other emergency vehicles rushed to the scene. A helicopter lowered
a basket to the roof of one of the buildings and appeared to be
taking away victims.
The navy yard is protected by a high wall, but
someone with official access could have driven a car into the
parking lot without having the trunk inspected.
Navy yard employees evacuated from the building
described a chaotic situation as an individual armed with a rifle
roamed the hallways shooting at people.
Cmdr. Tim Jirus said he was on the fourth floor
when he heard gunshots and saw people start running through the
office. The commander said he was at the back of the building when
a man approached him, asking about the shooting. Moments later,
the man was shot in the head.
“We had a conversation for about a minute,”
Commander Jirus said.
Asked how he escaped when the man next to him
was shot, he said: “Luck. Grace of God. Whatever you want to call
it.”
Reporting was contributed by Abby Goodnough,
Emmarie Huetteman, Thom Shanker, Sarah Maslin Nir and Joseph
Goldstein from Washington, and William K. Rashbaum from New York.