Firsthand reports from inside the Fort Hood’s soldier processing center describe a terrifying bloodbath during Nidal Malik Hasan’s 10-minute rampage.
About 300 soldiers were packed inside the center when Hasan entered the room.
He began blasting from behind a desk, and shouts of “Shots fired! Shots fired!” rang out as GIs dove for cover.
Survivors said Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, shot for at least 10 minutes, taking careful aim and trying to make each shot count.
“It was very deliberate in his approach,” base commander Lt. Gen. Robert Cone told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“He was shooting people more than once if he could.”
Hasan also combed through the room where some GIs played dead.
“I made the mistake of moving, and I was shot again,” one wounded soldier later told Cone.
Before the first ambulance arrived, soldiers were tearing off their clothes to make bandages for the wounded, Sgt. Andrew Hagerman said.
“You had people without tops on. You had people ripping their pant legs off,” said Hagerman.
He said he looked down to avoid stepping in the pools of blood or kicking any spent shell casings. “You could go around it,” he said. “There was definitely a path.”
“It was an exceptional scene. It was a terrible thing,” said Chuck Medley, the fort’s director of emergency services. “When I got there, soldiers were doing what soldiers do. They were protecting, evacuating the injured soldiers to secure locations.”