For those of you that don’t know, my city was probably featured on your national news yesterday. You can even Wiki it if you want, since there’s a Wikipedia page already up for it. Just put in “Ft. Hood shooting”, or something to that effect, and you should see the new Wiki page. Apparently, at approximately 1:20 to 1:30PM yesterday, a major got out a gun and began shooting people at the sports dome… that’s what we call our in-processing and out-processing center, because it used to be a sports dome that now processes the soldiers who are going to Iraq and the ones that are returning from there. This major was a recent Islamic convert who was completely against the Iraqi war, even going so far as not to tell his own immediate family anything about his impending deployment to Iraq. He killed thirteen people and wounded thirty others before a Fort Hood police officer took him down and killed him with gunfire. This happened while I was in Composition II, and Matt’s little brother was in his 1:30PM class as well.

Needless to say, Matt almost blew up my phone as soon as I’d gotten out of class pretty concerned about my welfare… he’d also asked me if I’d seen Paul, to which I had to say no because I hadn’t. If I had left the school even ten minutes later, I would have been stuck in there for awhile because they were in the process of debating whether or not to lock it down when I got dismissed from class and left. Most of the school districts around Ft. Hood were also either locked down or dismissed early with explicit instructions as to when and where parents could pick up their children, at least until they found two suspects and took them in for detainment as well… that, and the gunman was dead. They’re looking into whether or not it could have been a… response to his not wanting to go to Iraq, or whether or not it was terroristic. They don’t know his motives yet, but they’ve been questioning his friends and family…