What Really Happened At Ft. Hood — One Anonymous Soldier’s Firsthand Account (UPDATE)
Military blog ROFASIX has published a 1,500-word, first person account of the massacre at Fort Hood, as allegedly delivered by a soldier who not only watched the horrific events unfold, but was shot at. Though the details about the source are scarce, the graphic story speaks for itself as he describes the carnage with an affecting specificity that is truly haunting. The action begins as the soldier mistakenly visits the wrong building to have his smallpox vaccine checked on:
As I’m walking up to it the gunshots start. Slow and methodical. But continuous. Two ambulatory wounded came out. Then two soldiers dragging a third who was covered in blood. Hearing the shots but not seeing the shooter, along with a couple other soldiers I stood in the street and yelled at everyone who came running that it was clear but to “RUN!”.
From there, he explicitly details the blood, bullet holes and the eventual takedown of the shooter:
(I’m about 15-20 meters from the shooter.) I yell at the cop, “He’s reloading, he’s reloading. Shoot him! Shoot him!) You have to understand, everything was quiet at this point. The cop appears to hear me and comes around the corner and shoots the shooter.
He goes down. The cop kicks his weapon further away. I sprint up to the downed female cop. Another captain (I think he was with me behind the cars) comes up as well. She’s bleeding profusely out of her thigh. We take our belts off and tourniquet her just like we’ve been trained (I hope we did it right…we didn’t have any CLS (combat lifesaver) bags with their awesome tourniquets on us, so we worked with what we had).
He calls the subsequent media photos “the most bizarre moment of the day” and continues to describe the emergency response:
The female cop had been taken away,and a medic was pumping plasma into the shooter. I’m not proud of this but I went up to her and said “this is the shooter, is there anyone else who needs attention…do them first”. She indicated everyone else living was attended to. I still hadn’t seen any EMTs or ambulances. I had so much blood on me that people kept asking me if I was OK.
Mediaite contacted MilBlogs for more information about the source, questions addressed in the following note on ROFASIX which now appears at the bottom of the post:
A number of folks have asked me to identify the writer for them. This email was passed around in the “good ol’ boy army aviator” circuit. When it was sent the comment was made that they didn’t doubt the veracity of this supposed JAG officer. It read right, and reflected some of the confusion that just now is being resolved. Yet, no one could verify this was an actual 1st person eye witness account. I tend to believe it is.
MilBlogs also passed on the above photo, which was reportedly published with the caption: “A first responder to a lone gunman’s attack at Fort Hood Nov. 5 renders honors at retreat after aiding his fellow soldiers. U.S. Army photo.”
The chilling story can be read in its entirety here.
UPDATE: At his blog, Abram Sauer details the similarities between the above Ft. Hood account and another anonymous version of the story running at Mother Jones. The tone is different, the newer version is more politicized, but “[t]his is the same person’s account,” writes Sauer. “Whether that person was really there or not is impossible to tell … But if it’s fake, what’s the motivation?”
(h/t Abram Sauer)
