Pearl Harbor Shooting

The Pearl Harbor attack of December 7, 1941, happened 77 years ago. Saturday, December 7, 2019, will mark 78 years.

2:30

At 2:30 pm local Hawaiian time, on December 4, 2019, a male U.S. Navy sailor shot three people, then killed himself at Pearl Harbor on Wednesday, four days before the anniversary. The shootings happened near Dry Dock 2 and 3.

Of the three victims, two people died almost immediately and one was hospitalized in stable condition, officials at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam said.

Notice the numbers 2 and 3 crop up often in this shooting. A total of 2300 American-aligned individuals died at Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941.

Columbia

The names of the victims, all Department of Defense civilian workers, will be released after their families are notified.

Officials identified the gunman as an active duty sailor assigned to the USS Columbia. (Please refer to my essay on the meanings associated with Columbia, Columbus, and Columbine here.) The submarine was being repaired at the dry dock.

Victim identified: Vincent Kapoi Jr.

Pearl Harbor shooter identified as Petty Officer Gabriel Romero. One of the victims who was killed has been identified as 32 year old Vincent Kapoi Jr. Shooter used his M4 service rifle to kill the victims, and then turned the gun on himself, using his M9 service pistol.

USS Columbia (SSN-771), is the 60th flight II Improved Los Angeles-class attack submarine, and is the eighth vessel of the United States Navy to bear that name. The earlier Columbia's were given their names for differing reasons; SSN-771 was specifically named in honor of Columbia, South Carolina, Columbia, Missouri, and Columbia, Illinois.

It was unclear what type of gun was used or whether the attack was targeted.

A Synchromystical Place

Located on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, the naval shipyard is across the harbor from the Pearl Harbor National Memorial. Japanese imperialists bombed the harbor on December 7, 1941, killing more than 2,300 Americans. Survivors from the attack had already begun arriving in Honolulu for commemoration events, the base tweeted.

As I noted in "Pearl Harbor: A Synchromystical Place?" (December 7, 2013), the location was associated with hauntings and folklore long before the Japanese attack there in 1941. 

Narwhal

In the wake of December 7, 1941...

A view of the Navy Yard as seen from the Submarine Base in Southeast Loch. Honolulu, St. Louis, San Fransisco, and New Orleans are visible in the center distance. The submarine Narwhal is in the left foreground, while smoke in distance is from burning vessels in Dry Dock No. 1, YFD-2, and Battleship Row to the right.

Aztec School Shooting

Aztec High School is a public high school in Aztec, New Mexico. The school colors are Black and Orange and the mascot is the fighting Tiger.

Aztec (Navajo: Kinteel) is a city and county seat of San Juan County, New Mexico, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 6,763. The Aztec Ruins National Monument is located on the north side of the city. Located within the city limits of Aztec, the Aztec Ruins National Monument is a UNESCO World Heritage site managed by the National Park Service. Visitors are allowed to take a self-guided tour through the ruins of the main roomblock and restored Great Kiva.

 

Aztecs conducting human sacrifices, as shown in the Codex Magliabechiano

On the morning of December 7, 2017, the San Juan County Sheriff's Department responded to an active shooter on campus. The New Mexico State Police confirmed that two students were killed by the gunman, who died as well. 

Audio files uploaded to Broadcastify by San Juan County General Dispatch caught the first few minutes of the incident. A law enforcement officer can be heard saying, "I think officers were shooting out the windows to get inside" as alarms are going off in the background.

According to The Washington Post, fifteen others were injured. It was not immediately clear if the shooting happened inside the school, who was suspected of firing the shots, and what condition the injured were in. 

Lt. Kyle Lincoln reported the clearing of the building and the searching of the school.

The Aztec, New Mexico, UFO incident (sometimes known as the "other Roswell") was a flying saucer crash alleged to have happened in 1948 in Aztec, New Mexico. The story was first published in 1949 by author Frank Scully in his Variety magazine columns, and later in his 1950 book "Behind the Flying Saucers". In the mid 1950s, the story was exposed as a hoax fabricated by two confidence men, Silas M. Newton and Leo A. Gebauer as part of a fraudulent scheme to sell supposed alien technology. Beginning in the 1970s, some Ufologists resurrected the story in books claiming the purported crash was real. In 2013, an FBI memo claimed by some Ufologists to substantiate the crash story was dismissed by the bureau as "a second- or third-hand claim that we never investigated."

For more on the Aztec Incident, see Andrew Griffin's review of a book about the case.