Another Fort Hood Mass Shooting

 Ivan Lopez, Fort Hood's newest mass shooter.

Mass shootings sometimes repeat in the same locations. Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas, was the site of a mass shooting on November 5, 2009, when Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan killed 13 people. Now there is early news of another multiple shooting at Fort Hood. (See my posting on the 2009 event, here.)

On April 2, 2014, four people were killed, including the gunman, in a shooting at Fort Hood in Texas, according to law enforcement officials, senior U.S. officials and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

The committee chairman, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, told CNN he had been briefed on the deadly incident and said there were also 14 injuries. At least two of the injured had multiple gunshot wounds, a hospital spokesman said.

Indications are that the shooter died by suicide. An initial report indicates the shooting incident started as a soldier-on-soldier attack.

A U.S. military official said the shooter was an enlisted soldier named Ivan Lopez, who is dead. He was a 34-year-old Specialist, who was known to have driven trucks.

The Iraq War veteran, suffering from PTSD, Ivan Lopez was initially angry that he was not given permission to attend his mother’s funeral, but had been given a 24-hour pass to attend. A friend said Lopez mentioned he had an argument with someone at the base prior to the shootings.

Spc. Ivan Lopez, Fort Hood, Warrior Transition Brigade.

President Obama said his national security team was "working with folks on the ground to determine exactly what happened and to ensure that everyone is secure."

"The situation is fluid right now. ... Any shooting is troubling," the president said. "We're heartbroken that something like this might have happened again. I don't what on the comment on facts until we know exactly what happened. But just for now I would hope that everyone across the country keep the families of Fort Hood in our thoughts and our prayers. ... We don't yet know what happened tonight but obviously that sense of safety has been broken once again."

Fort Hood officiale identified the soldiers killed in the shooting as Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Ferguson, Sgt. Carlos Lazaney, and Sgt. Timothy Owens.

Fort Hood is a United States military post located in Killeen, Texas, in Bell County. The post is named after Confederate General John Bell Hood. The county is named named for Texas's third Governor Peter Hansborough Bell. What we observe here is a double-Bell power name game focus (see here).

Ivan means "Gift from God," or is seen as a variant of John, also "Yahweh is merciful."

López is a surname of Spanish origin. It was originally a patronymic, meaning Son of Lope, Lope itself being a Spanish given name deriving from Latin lupus, meaning wolf.

Fort Hood is located halfway between Austin and Waco, about 60 miles from each other, within the U.S. state of Texas. Waco in April has certainly been the apex of violence, of course.

After the 2009 shooting, during Hasan's trial, he called himself a "mujahedeen," or Muslim holy warrior. Hasan did not deny he was the shooter. He was convicted and received the death penalty in August 2013.

Lopez reportedly bought his weapon on March 1 at the Guns Galore store in Killeen, Texas — the same shop where Major Nidal Hasan bought the gun used in his 2009 killing spree.

Fort Hood-Linked Iman Killed

In the wake of recent police ambush incidents and other shootings, which appear to have occurred as copycats of the Fort Hood killings, there is more breaking news today.

A bulletin from Reuters reports that "radical Muslim preacher" Anwar al-Awlaki (linked by U.S. intelligence to the Fort Hood shootings) has died in a Yemen airstrike on al Qaeda militants, a security official from Sanaa said on Thursday, Christmas Eve Day, December 24, 2009. In the Fort Hood massacre, allegedly one gunman killed 13 people at the U.S. Army base.

The SITE Intelligence Group handout photo (at top) was obtained November 10, 2009, of Anwar al-Awlaki, a former US resident living in Yemen and accused al-Qaeda supporter, who commented on his website on November 9, 2009, that the attack at Fort Hood perpetrated by the alleged gunman, Major Nidal Hasan, was a "heroic act." As officials advance the investigation into the Army Major who allegedly perpetrated the massacre at Fort Hood, attention had turned to Anwar al-Awlaki, a top al Qaeda recruiter who was in contact with Major Nidal Hasan before the Army shootings.


Major Nidal Hasan.

According to the Washington Post, Imam Al-Awlaki of Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia at one time was the Muslim Chaplain at George Washington University. He held a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Colorado State University, a M.A. in Education Leadership from San Diego State University and worked on a Doctorate degree in Human Resource Development at George Washington University.

Doesn't the following image make you wonder, why would someone want to have their photo on Anwar al-Awlaki's Facebook page?



Information from AP, AFP, Newscom, KOMO, Reuters, Washington Post, SMiles Foster, and other media.