Fort Hood Massacre: 13 Dead at Military Base

U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire inside the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5, 2009, killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 in the deadliest mass shooting at a military installation in American history. The attack lasted roughly ten minutes before civilian police officer Kimberly Munley and Sergeant Mark Todd confronted Hasan in the parking lot. Todd shot Hasan four times, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. Hasan, a 39-year-old Army psychiatrist, had been evaluating soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Colleagues reported he had expressed increasingly radical views, including sympathy for suicide bombers and hostility toward American military operations in Muslim countries. He had exchanged emails with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric in Yemen later killed by an American drone strike. An FBI investigation into those communications had been closed after analysts concluded the emails were consistent with Hasan's research duties. The victims were soldiers preparing for deployment or returning from combat zones. Many were unarmed, as military regulations prohibit carrying personal weapons on base. Staff Sergeant Amy Krueger, Private First Class Aaron Nemelka, and eleven others died. Private Francheska Velez, who was pregnant, was among the killed. Hasan was convicted on 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder in August 2013 and sentenced to death. He represented himself at trial, offered no defense, and appeared to seek the death penalty as martyrdom. The case sparked a prolonged debate about whether the attack constituted terrorism or workplace violence, a distinction with consequences for survivors' benefits. In 2015, Congress passed legislation granting Purple Hearts to the victims, formally recognizing the attack as an act of terrorism.