Fort Hood suspect is brought to BAMC

FORT HOOD — The chaos and carnage easily could have occurred in Baghdad.

The moment a lone gunman opened fire on soldiers, the crowd scattered. Several lay wounded in pools of blood. Bystanders ripped off their clothing and belts, making bandages and tourniquets.

"Every single medic was just going on like it was a movie, it was scripted: ‘I need a shirt! I need a belt! Elevate his head!’ Everybody was helping everybody," said Jeannette Juroff, a 32-year-old reservist with the 75th Battle Command Training Division in Houston who was eating lunch at the Soldier Readiness Center when the shots began.

The suspect in the massacre, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was in stable condition late Friday at Brooke Army Medical Center. He arrived in San Antonio by helicopter at 3:10 p.m., spokesman Dewey Mitchell said.

He said Hasan was being watched by armed guards. San Antonio AirLife, a private firm, flew him from Scott & White Memorial Hospital in Temple.

Nonmilitary security officers were stopping cars and checking IDs more diligently than usual at the Interstate 35 entrance to BAMC. FBI agents and armed guards on a second floor Intensive Care Unit corridor brusquely shooed visitors along.

A day after Hasan is alleged to have shouted "God is great!" in Arabic and started firing more than 100 shots from two pistols, killing 13 and seriously wounding 29, personnel at Fort Hood could recount dozens of horrific tales.

There was Juroff, who hid in a restroom with several others, the door locked and the lights out, while the screams grew louder and closer.

Not far away, Sgt. Andrew Hagerman was patrolling a residential area on the military’s largest post when he heard a report of gunshots.

At first, the 27-year-old military policeman from Lewisville and two-tour veteran of Iraq, suspected kids with firecrackers. Racing to the scene, he looked at the attacker, the man authorities say is responsible for the deadliest non-wartime military base shooting in history.

Hasan was shirtless, in combat pants and on the ground, wounded and unconscious.

Nearby, 22-year-old Spc. Refugio Figuroa of Brownsville, on his way to the hospital with his wife for a sonogram, stopped his truck, jumped out, and directed traffic.

And there was the small but tenacious Fort Hood civilian police officer and her partner who authorities said intercepted the gunman, saving the lives of countless soldiers, hailed as heroes on a day of grief and mourning.

They say Sgt. Kimberly Munley rushed to the scene when the first shots rang out about 1:30 p.m., challenged Hasan and fired repeatedly at him with her 9mm Baretta handgun, rolling to the ground as he fired back.

Both fell wounded amid gunfire that sparked what one witness called "controlled chaos," with soldiers rushing to the scene.

"You don’t ever expect to see this when you’re at home or anything like that, but like I said before, you swear to protect your country against all enemies, both foreign and domestic, so you’re trained for either fight," Hagerman said.

Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army’s chief of staff, told reporters Friday that one soldier dragged four wounded GIs to his pickup and drove them to Darnall Army Community Hospital on the post. He said a probe into the shooting was under way, as was a review of force protection measures to prevent a similar incident.

"This was a kick in the gut not only for the Fort Hood community, but also for our entire Army," he said.

Neither Casey nor Army Secretary John McHugh revealed any details about the 39-year-old Army psychiatrist believed to have been the lone assailant.

Hasan, who was raised in Northern Virginia, was shot four times by either Munley, Senior Sgt. Mark Todd, or both — the Army still is sorting it out.

Little was known about Hasan’s possible motives. Federal authorities Friday launched a Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation into the attack to determine whether Hasan had any ties to Islamic extremists in the United States or overseas, said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin.

Army records show Hasan recently was promoted to major and arrived at Fort Hood in July. Though reportedly an observant Muslim, he listed his religious preference as "none" in the documents.

Hasan, who hadn’t deployed to the war zone but was preparing to go to Afghanistan, had served at Walter Reed Army Medical Center since 2004, said Col. Kimberly Kesling, who oversees more than 700 personnel as Darnall’s chief of medical staff.

Asked about Hasan’s demeanor and bearing as an officer, she said he’d presented no red flags since coming to the post hospital last summer.

"As the chief of the medical staff, I am essentially his boss’ boss," Kesling, a 46-year-old Boise, Idaho native, told reporters. "I know Dr. Hasan, and as with all of my providers I keep track of them when they come into my organization and make sure that they’re fitting in well with the medical staff, that they’re providing good care to our patients, and our beneficiaries.

"By all reports, he was doing all of that. He was a hard-working, dedicated young man who gave great care to his patients."

Witnesses at the shooting scene and at the hospital described the attack as a virtual replay of their own experiences in Iraq, with one exception: most victims there suffer burns and trauma as a result of powerful bombs. But in this case, all suffered bullet wounds.

Kesling said most of the injuries were below the torso — a break for the hospital’s ER teams because head injuries are far more difficult to treat.

Sgt. Howard Appleby, a 31-year-old Jamaican on his way to see a psychiatrist who’s treating him for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, said he had flashbacks of his two Iraq deployments while taking wounded troops out of ambulances at the hospital.

When asked to describe the flashbacks, he replied: "I don’t even want to talk about it."

Outside the hospital, he had performed triage on incoming patients, some of whom had driven to the emergency room on their own.

More than half of them suffered multiple gunshot wounds. Most of the injured soldiers were young.

"People were shot just about everywhere," said Maj. Stephen Beckwith, a doctor and the post's EMS director. "It’s hard to imagine one person doing this much damage."

The deluge of wounded took the hospital by surprise. Darnall had about 30 doctors, nurses and technicians when the first patients came in, but Kesling and Lt. Col. Larry Masullo said around 100 other staff quickly reacted — as envisioned in the hospital’s mass casualty plan.

But, he added, the hospital — though far from Baghdad or the facility he served in during 2007 in Mosul — quickly assumed a mass casualty (also known as mass cal) event of the sort often seen in Iraq.

"I’ve been involved in several mass cals of this size while deployed, but certainly didn’t expect to see that here," said Masullo, 46, formerly of Farmingdale, N.Y.

The gunman, armed with two pistols that weren’t issued by the military, shot at more than 40 people early Thursday afternoon at the readiness center, filled with troops preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan — or returning from combat. The assault lasted about 10 minutes, said Col. John Rossi, deputy commander of the post.

Shots still were being fired as paramedics arrived and treated wounded, and one of them later suffered an "acute stress response," Beckwith said.

He said 16 trauma bays were available in the hospital, and medics and doctors treated patients quickly enough to never run out of beds.

The owners of Guns Galore on Fort Hood Road in Killeen — which advertises "3,000 guns in stock, 1,700 plus on display" — gave the FBI all their paperwork on gun sales to Hasan, said Killeen police Sgt. Greg Ebert, who was posted to keep reporters out of the store. Ebert declined to identify the types of guns Hasan bought.

The Associated Press said one of the weapons was an FN 5.7, whose Belgian manufacturer claims can fire a 5.7 mm bullet through any body armor and holds a 20-round clip. U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, told reporters Hasan used a .357-caliber Magnum.

Carter was among several lawmakers attending a ceremony inside a C-17 before the flag-draped caskets of the 13 slain were flown to Dover AFB in Delaware for forensic tests.

Asked if he feared the shooting would inspire resentment within the Army against Muslims, Gen. Casey said he does not fear it but does worry about it.

The general said it was premature to draw any conclusions about the shooting being a sign that the Army has been relying for too long on too few soldiers.

"It’s simply too early to make a judgment about what has happened here, whether the small Army was why this happened," Casey said.