The link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews
The California man who walked calmly up to two police officers and opened fire at an entrance to the Pentagon Thursday evening appears to have acted alone and was not connected to any terrorist plot, Pentagon police chief Richard S. Keevill said Friday morning.
The shooter, identified as 36-year-old John Patrick Bedell, was dressed in a business suit and carried two 9-millimeter semi-automatic weapons and "many magazines" of ammunition, Keevill said at a 6 a.m. news conference. "He walked very directly to the officers and engaged," Keevill said.
The officers were superficially wounded, one in the shoulder and one in the thigh, the police chief said. Both were treated at George Washington University Hospital in Northwest Washington and released.
They and a third officer returned fire at Bedell, critically wounding him in the head, said Keevill, chief of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency. Bedell died at George Washington University Hospital.
Keevill said police and the FBI are examining surveillance video that shows Bedell as he approached the Pentagon, and have tracked his road trip from the Washington area to California over the last several weeks. They impounded his car, located at a nearby parking garage, and are processing the evidence found inside of it, including more ammunition.
"At this time it appears to be a single individual that had issues," Keevill said. He emphasized that law enforcement officials have found no link between Bedell and any terror group in the United States or overseas.
Police are looking at possible anti-government Internet postings by Bedell, Keevill said, and still trying to establish his motive for the attack at a doorway to the nation's defense headquarters, one of the busiest, most prominent and closely guarded buildings in the Washington area.
"The officers acted very quickly and decisively to neutralize him as a threat," Keevill said. "No one else was injured." He said the whole incident lasted less than a minute.
The shooting occurred at 6:40 p.m., near the end of rush hour. The Pentagon Metrorail station and transit center remained closed Friday morning. Trains are passing through the station, officials said, but passengers have to board or disembark at the nearby Pentagon City station.
"We're lucky. we're very fortunate that there were not more civilians" at the entrance at the time of the shooting, Keevill said.
In the hours after the shooting, police sought to interview a man seen talking to Bedell on the surveillance video. But one federal law enforcement source said the second man was not thought to be involved.
A man who identified himself as John Bedell answered a call placed to a Hollister, Calif., home and said he had a 36-year-old son named John Patrick Bedell "who is in the Washington area." The elder Bedell then said, "I'm sorry, I can't talk about this," and hung up.
President Obama was following the case and was being provided updates from the FBI, assistant White House press secretary Nicholas Shapiro said.
Keevill said that witnesses reported that the gunman "walked up very cool" and displayed "no real emotion on his face."
At a key moment, as he reached into his pocket, "they assumed he was going to get his pass out." A security pass is necessary to enter the Pentagon building. But instead of bringing out a pass, Keevill said, the man "came out with a gun."
Then, Keevill said, the man started shooting.
"There wasn't time to say anything to him," Keevill said. "He drew a gun and started shooting almost immediately."
Although the Pentagon is a symbol of the nation's armed forces, there was nothing disclosed immediately that tied the incident to attacks such as the one last year at Fort Hood, Tex.
In many ways, the incident seemed reminiscent of two attacks in Washington in the past dozen years. One was the shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum last year, in which a man with a gun walked up to the museum entrance and shot and killed a guard before the man was wounded. In another, an armed man shot and killed two Capitol Police officers at an entrance to the Capitol.
As pieced together from accounts given Thursday night, the attack occurred at an entrance linking the Pentagon to the Pentagon Station on the Metrorail system, which runs underground at that point. The spot teems with people, including Pentagon employees and other commuters who transfer to and from buses.
Police are routinely posted there as "the first line of defense" for the Pentagon, said Terrance P. Sutherland, chief spokesman for the Pentagon police.
The Pentagon's security system worked as intended, officials said. The gunman was prevented from entering the building and injuring anyone at work inside.
"We train with some regularity to see we can do it very quickly, and we did it very quickly tonight," Keevill said. At the Friday briefing, he said the police force's procedures worked, and he saw no reason to change them.
"The Fort Hood incident put us on notice that [a shooting] could happen even in a military installation," Keevill said. He said officers were prepared for what happened, and reacted well.
The number of shots fired by the gunman was not made clear. The number of shots fired by the officers was also not disclosed, but the total was described as high. The officers wore bullet-resistant vests. Bedell did not, Keevill said. Dozens of officers from many area jurisdictions, including the Arlington County and Pentagon police forces and some military personnel, converged on the Pentagon, directing traffic and using police dogs to search vehicles arriving at the south parking lot.
The Pentagon was briefly locked down. The Pentagon Metro station was closed shortly before 10 p.m. and will remain closed Friday so the FBI can investigate, said Cathy Asato, a Metro spokeswoman. Trains will pass through the station but will not pick up or drop off passengers. The Pentagon transit center also was to be closed, with pickups made at the Pentagon City station, officials said.
The Pentagon Metrorail station has two banks of entryway escalators that lead to the underground station, with one of the Pentagon building's entrances located between the rail station's entrances, according to Metro.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, the Defense Department completely rebuilt the Metro entrance to the Pentagon for security reasons.
Previously, a single escalator connected the Metro platform to the Pentagon entrance. After the 9/11 attacks, the escalator was closed and the old entrance walled off. Today, a new elevator leads outside. Pentagon workers must pass through a large stone entrance. Outside the main doors two guards sit behind bulletproof glass barriers and check identification cards. Inside the building beyond a set of turnstiles is another guard, armed with a rifle.
In 2005, Officer James Feltis became the first Pentagon force officer killed in the line of duty. He was dragged by a Cadillac stolen by a carjacker who was fleeing Alexandria police and entered a Pentagon parking lot, where Feltis tried to stop him.
PENTAGON SHOOTING
How long til we get the Shooter's name???
Linear Mode
