Four Dead in Shooting at US Base

Local Editor

A soldier killed three people and wounded 16 before turning the gun on himself Wednesday at Fort Hood, the US military base devastated by a deadly 2009 rampage, the commanding general said.

Lieutenant General Mark Milley said the gunman, who served in Iraq in 2011, was being treated for depression and anxiety, and being checked for possible Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD].

All of the dead and wounded were military personnel.

"At this time, there is no indication that this incident is related to terrorism, although we are not ruling anything out," Milley told reporters at the sprawling US army installation in Texas.
He further stated: "We do not know a motive. We do know that this soldier had... mental health issues, and was being treated for that."
The gunman - who was not immediately identified pending notification of next of kin - used a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol, which he bought recently and apparently smuggled onto the base.

He opened fire in a medical building, got into a vehicle while still shooting and then went to another building.

The assailant killed himself when he was engaged in a parking lot by an armed female military policewoman, shooting himself in the head, said Milley.
The general praised the servicewoman's courage, saying it was "clearly heroic."
Milley said the Fort Hood gunman was "currently under diagnosis for PTSD but had not been diagnosed with PTSD." The shooter, who was married, was on medication and had reportedly told officials that he had suffered a traumatic brain injury.

CBS News and other media, citing unnamed sources, identified the shooter as a 34-year-old Army specialist.
The US army base remained on lockdown for a couple of hours after staff were ordered to shelter in place, but personnel and family members were later given the all-clear.

A soldier told CNN he heard gunshots "and assumed they were blank rounds... We then heard a burst, another burst and it was clear they weren't blank rounds. They were live rounds."
President Barack Obama said he was "heartbroken something like this might have happened again," and pledged that investigators would "get to the bottom of what happened."

"Obviously, this reopened the pain of what happened at Fort Hood five years ago," Obama said.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team