The REAL Hero of Ft. Hood

Senior Sgt. Mark Todd, of the Killeen Police Dept. (Photo Credit: Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times)

From NYTimes.com:

Second Officer at Fort Hood Offers an Account of the Shooting
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

KILLEEN, Tex. — Sgt. Kimberly D. Munley has been applauded as a hero across the nation for shooting down Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan during the bloody rampage at Fort Hood last week. The account of heroism, given by the authorities, attracted the attention of newspapers, the networks and television talk shows.

But the initial story of how Sergeant Munley and the accused gunman went down in an exchange of gunfire now appears to be inaccurate.

Another officer, Senior Sgt. Mark Todd, 42, fired the shots that brought down the rampaging gunman after he had seriously wounded Sergeant Munley, according to an eyewitness account and an interview on Thursday morning with Sergeant Todd himself.

In the interview, Sergeant Todd said he and Sergeant Munley pulled up to the scene of the shooting in separate cars at the same time, and ran up a small hill toward a building where Major Hasan had attacked unarmed soldiers as they stood in lines for check-ups and vaccinations before deployment. The gunman was already outside the building, he recalled.

“That’s when the bystanders were pointing in his direction,” he said. “And when we popped up, he was standing there, and we shouted our commands — “Police, drop your weapons” — and he just opened fire on us.”

Sergeant Todd said he was slightly in front of Sergeant Munley on the hill. “Once we took fire, she broke right and I broke left,” he said.

Sergeant Todd said he did not see his colleague get wounded. He started to circle around the building, but then backtracked as panicked bystanders told him of the gunman’s movements.

“As it unfolded, I went a different direction and he went a different direction, and we met up in the front of the building,” he said.

Sergeant Todd said he then saw Sergeant Munley on the ground, already seriously wounded. He shouted again at the gunman to drop his weapon.

“Once I came around the front of the building, I caught his attention again, started shouting commands and then he opened up a second time,” he said. “And that’s when I returned fire, neutralized him and secured him.” Citing the ongoing investigation, Sergeant Todd declined to give more details about the precise positions of Major Hasan, Sergeant Munley and himself during the gunfight. Neither would he say how many times he shot Major Hasan with his 9 mm pistol, or what the gunman was doing when he shot him down. The whole chaotic encounter lasted only 45 seconds, he said.

But Sergeant Todd’s account agrees with the statements of an eyewitness who had gone to the base’s processing center, where the shooting occurred, to conduct business before being deployed.

The witness, who asked not to be identified, said Major Hasan wheeled on Sergeant Munley as she rounded the corner of a building and shot her, putting her on the ground. Then Major Hasan turned his back on her and started putting another magazine into his semiautomatic pistol.

It was at that moment, the witness said, that Sergeant Todd, rounded another corner of the building, found Major Hasan fumbling with his weapon and shot him.

How the authorities came to issue the original version of the story, which made Sergeant Munley a national hero for several days and obscured Sergeant Todd’s role, remains unclear. (Military officials also said for several hours after the shooting that Major Hasan had been killed, although he had survived.)

Six days after the deadly shooting rampage at a center where soldiers were preparing for deployment, the military has yet to put out a full account of what happened.

READ MORE HERE.

First, they said Hasan was dead. WRONG. Then they said Munley took Hasan down. WRONG. So, what else about this Ft. Hood story is wrong??