Fort Hood Marks One Year Since Deadly Rampage

Hood Marks One Year Since Deadly Rampage

November 05, 2010
Agence France-Presse
FORT HOOD, Texas -- When the first shots rang out in a deployment center here, Soldiers thought it was a drill. They were stunned to discover they were in a middle of a massacre, by one of their own.

By the time it was over, 13 people were dead and dozens more wounded in an attack that brought home the war to this sprawling military base in the heart of Texas, and raised the specter of homegrown Islamic extremism.

A year after the shootings, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 40, sits paralyzed from the chest down in a jail cell facing 13 counts of premeditated murder -- charges that could bring the death penalty.

The Nov. 5, 2009, shooting shocked the nation. Military officials have faced intense criticism for overlooking warning signs about Hasan, an army psychiatrist who corresponded by e-mail with a radical cleric now in Yemen.

The cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, has since been accused of links to a string of other plots originating from Yemen, most recently the discovery of explosive devices on U.S. cargo planes.

The Army's top civilian, John McHugh, and chief of staff, Gen. George Casey, will speak here Friday at a ceremony in memory of the victims. A 6-foot-tall granite memorial etched with the names of the 13 people killed in last year's shooting rampage was to be unveiled at the ceremony.

Survivors have searing memories of the day.

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Hood Marks One Year Since Deadly Rampage