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UPDATE: Since posting the story below, the alleged shooter, Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan, was found to be alive and is now in custody. Hasan is now the only suspect, and investigators no longer consider the other people previously considered suspects as such any more.
Psychology Chair Thomas Billimek, who retired from the U.S. Army as a colonel after his last command in 2003 at Fort Hood, described today’s mass shooting by simply saying, “It’s a tragedy.”
A major at Fort Hood near Killeen allegedly opened fire on soldiers as they were preparing to deploy to Iraq, according to cnn.com. Twelve, including the alleged shooter, were killed and 31 were wounded. Two other suspects have been apprehended.
The cable news network identified the alleged shooter as Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan and said he was an Army psychologist.
Billimek said it is sad to see solders training to be deployed but killed at home.
“Those medical personnel are also under a tremendous amount of strain. We don’t think about them reacting that way but they’re human beings.”
In 2003, Billimek commanded a unit with a mission to process soldiers.
He “ran operations of exactly what’s going on now,” he said referring to how the solders reacted to the shooting. He said: “It’s a city, there’s no other way to describe it.
“My initial reaction more to anything else was sadness for everyone at Fort. Hood,” he said.
Billimek was working in his office when he encountered the information online.
Before he saw the news, he said, “I was actually preparing a test,” and then he turned on the volume from the window displaying the information.
Billimek said Fort Hood is not an easy place for just anyone to enter, nonetheless bring in a weapon; still some places do not have metal detectors.
“It is a closed instillation,” he said. There are guarded stops, which monitor the flow of visitors.
He said each vehicle must stop at the guarded areas and is checked to verify if they have a decal that verifies they belong on site.
If they are not, the vehicle is required to get a temporary decal and every person entering must have photo identification on hand.
Either way, military personal are allowed to carry arms, he said. Soldiers are issued arms when on flight but Billimek said, “no solider deploying will be armed with ammunition.”
“The military are family,” he said and “the types of precautions that could’ve been taken, were.”
Billimek said everyone at Fort Hood did what they are taught to do, for example, staying inside and not getting close to the windows.
“They were doing exactly what needed to be done in these situations,” he said. “I don’t know of anything else that could be done.”
He said: “I really feel sad for the families of those lost loved ones.”
Billimek said he was primarily in the Army Reserve and had a battalion in Corpus Christi and assignments at Fort Sam Houston and a systems center in Massachusetts. His last assignment was at Headquarters, 400th US Army Garrison Support Unit at Fort Hood.
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