Federal law-enforcement authorities said Tuesday the former-reservist gunman in the bloody mass murder at the Washington Navy Yard wanted to get back into the Navy — but was blocked because of “problems’’ with officials at the base and his bosses.
Navy vet Aaron Alexis, 34, of Queens “didn’t take it very well’’ when he ran into the roadblock, an official told the Los Angeles Times.
And the rejection only seemed to fuel his already-existent mental problems.
Alexis began hearing voices in his head while suffering from sleep deprivation, anger and paranoia, sources told The Post.
He sought treatment in August from the Veterans Administration, sources said. He reached out to two VA hospitals, including one in the New England area.
“[HJ] went to the VA to talk to them about mental-health issues. He was trying to get help, we think,” an official told the Times.
Still, the Navy had not declared him mentally unfit, which would have rescinded a security clearance that Alexis had from his earlier time in the Naval Reserves.
It also presumably would have raised red flags for his employer, The Experts, a subcontractor of Hewlett Packard.
His IT job with the subcontractor allowed him to land a government-contract access card issued to civilians — which he used to gain entry to the Navy Yard using for Monday morning’s bloodbath.
Thomas Hoshko, chief executive officer of The Experts, said Tuesday that he only learned from the media that Alexis also had been busted at least twice before, once for shooting a construction worker’s tire in a fit of rage.
It’s unclear if the company was in the dark, too, about the eight misconduct charges leveled against Alexis when he served as a full-time Navy reservist from 2007 to 2011.
Alexis had been cited for everything from insubordination to disorderly conduct to unauthorized long absences from work — and was about to be booted on a general discharge, which would have alerted any future employers that he had problems.
But after the Navy dragged its feet on the proceedings, Alexis applied to leave in early 2011 and was allowed the honorable discharge, officials said.
Hoshko criticized the Navy for not sharing more information about Alexis’s troubled past.
Meanwhile, the Navy ordered a review of security at all its bases.
Authorities said Alexis had three guns on him during his rampage — at least one smuggled in past by guards and metal detectors.
They included a newly bought shotgun and two handguns — at least one of which belonged to a security guard at the compound.
Alexis had recently rented an AR-15 assault rifle but returned it before the bloodshed.
Alexis had just been reassigned to the Yard for work last week — only a few days before going postal in Building 197 and fatally gunning down 12 people before cops shot him dead.
His problems at work included simmering resentment over a contracting job in Japan, which he returned home from at the end of last year.
Friends said he felt he’d been racially discriminated against in general and been financially “screwed.”
“He [had] a couple of issues with being black. He felt he hadn’t been treated right, not by the Navy, just generally. He didn’t have a lot of friends,” best pal and landlord Nutpisit Suthamtewakul, who Alexis lived with in Fort Worth, Texas, told the Daily Telegraph.
“After he came back from Japan, he was telling me he didn’t get paid the right amount. He got screwed,” Suthamtewakul said.
“He didn’t like the system,’’ Suthamtewakul told The Post.
Although a devout Buddhist, Alexis dealt with some of his anger by playing violent “zombie’’ video games, frequently from 12.30 p.m. till 4.30a.m.
“He could be in the game all day and all night. I think games might be what pushed him that way,’’ Suthamtewakul said.
His growing paranoia took a dangerous turn in the meantime.
Alexis began toting a .45-caliber handgun in his pants waistband, his friend said.
“He always had this fear people would steal his stuff, so that’s why he would carry his gun all the time,’’ said Suthamtewakul, who runs the Happy Bowl restaurant.
“He would carry it when he was helping out in the restaurant which scared my customers.”
It didn’t help that Alexis seemed to suffer from PTSD after 9/11, the pal said.
“I remember him talking about 9/11. He was there, and when he came outside, one of the buildings was gone already,’’ Suthamtewakul recalled of Alexis, who was born in Kew Garden Hills and still has family in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
“All of a sudden, the second building came down. He was an angry American, angry with the terrorists. I think maybe there was PTSD,’’ Suthamtewakul told the Telegraph.
Alexis’s relatives had been estranged from him in the past few years, apparently because of his growing mental problems.
“He hadn’t been around in a while. He was bouncing all around the country,’’ said a law-enforcement source told The Post. “His family hadn’t seen him for awhile.’’
Alexis started his killing spree at 8:20 a.m. — just as employees at the Navy Sea Systems Command building arrived for work — silently stalking the hallways on two floors and shooting sniper-style into the lobby to pick off his targets.
“No words. He raised the gun and started firing. He said nothing,’’ Sea Systems executive assistant Todd Brundidge told NBC.
For some reason, he had an ID belonging to Rollie Chance, a retired Chief Petty Officer with the Navy who was initially identified as the shooter before Alexis was confirmed as the suspect.
Chance’s sister, Tanya Denise Chance of Brooklyn, said Tuesday that she didn’t know if her brother knew the shooter.
“I haven’t spoken to my brother for a couple of weeks. I know about the shootings but I didn’t hear anything about my brother,” she told The Post. “I wonder how he got my brother’s ID, do you think he stole it?”
Chance refused comment when reached at his Stafford, Va., home.
Monday, as Alexis silently moved through the halls of Building 197, panicked workers were heard screaming to each other, “Where is he?! Where is he?!’’
Someone pulled a fire alarm to warn others, and after hearing it, Brundidge and his colleagues ran into the hallway — and came face-to-face with the killer.
“He was down the hall, and he stepped around the corner,’’ Brundidge said, adding the gunman was dressed all in blue.
“He aimed his gun at us, and he fired two or three shots. We ran down the stairs to get out of the building,’’ Brundidge told CNN. “After we left, there were still shots.”
A co-worker, Terrie Durham, said the group avoided slaughter by mere inches.
“He aimed high and missed . . . We’re lucky he was far enough away he was a bad shot,’’ she said.
Navy Capt. Mark Vandroff, 46, said he and eight other workers ran to a nearby third-floor conference room and barricaded themselves inside.
“We were all lying on the ground. But when we looked up, about eight feet off the floor, there were bullet holes in the walls,’’ he said.
At one point, the gunman shot sniper-style from a fourth-floor walkway overlooking the lobby, targeting people outside the cafeteria on the first floor.
“It was three gunshots straight in a row — pop, pop, pop,’’ said Patricia Ward. “Three seconds later, it was pop, pop, pop, pop, so it was like about a total of seven gunshots.”
Navy Cmdr. Tim Jirus said he fled into an alley in the back of the building and wound up standing next to another man as two shots were fired at 8:45 a.m.
Jirus told The Post that he turned around to see where the gunfire was coming from and, by the time he spun back around, the man beside him had been fatally shot in the head.
“It’s crazy. You come to work on a Monday, and the next thing you know, there are people inside your building shooting the people you work with,’’ Jirus said.
A neighbor of slain victim Kathy Gaarde in Prince William County, Va., told The Washington Post on Monday night that she was the “kindest lady in the world.”
“She just helped make it a good home for her family and worked hard,” Patrick Bolton said.
The vice president of LMI, a consulting firm where victim Michael Arnold worked, told the paper he was a “great American.”
“People liked working with Mike,” said Jeff Bennett. “He was just a solid, solid citizen.”
Some 2,000 people were still in the naval complex more than 12 hours after the shootings. One worker was found after hiding in a locker for 11 hours.
The wounded included DC Metro Police Officer Scott Williams, who took two bullets to the leg, The Washington Post said.
Washington Hospital Center said it treated the cop and two women and all were expected to survive.
Authorities did not give details on how Alexis died after being hunted down by heavily armed SWAT-team members, some wearing night-vision goggles.
The FBI Monday night said he was the lone gunman, despite reports during the day that a second shooter was being sought.
He had purchased the shotgun he used in Lorton, Va., and was believed to have stayed at the Residence Inn in Washington, DC, for a few weeks before the attack.
He was identified by his fingerprints, after being found with Chance’s ID.
Additional reporting by Erin Calabrese in Fort Worth, Texas, S.A. Miller in DC and Kevin Sheehan in NY