FBI says Texas naval base shooting is ‘terrorism-related’
(AP) — A shooting at a Texas naval air station that wounded a sailor and left the gunman dead early Thursday was being investigated as “terrorism-related,” the FBI said, but divulged few details as to why.
The suspect was identified as Adam Alsahli of Corpus Christi, according to three officials familiar with the investigation who were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
At about 6:15 a.m., the gunman tried to speed through a
security gate at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, opening fire and
wounding the sailor, a member of base security, U.S. officials told the
AP. But she was able to roll over and hit the switch that raised a
barrier, preventing the man from getting onto the base, the officials
said.
Other security personnel shot and killed the man.
There
was an initial concern that he may have an explosive device, but Navy
experts swept the area and the car and found nothing. The officials
spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details about an ongoing
investigation. Officials were still working to process the crime scene
late into the day and had recovered some type of electronic media.
The
base was on lockdown for about five hours, but it was lifted shortly
before noon. The main gate was reopened, though the gate where the
incident occurred was still shut down.
FBI Supervisory Senior
Resident Agent Leah Greeves said at a news conference that investigators
were working to determine whether a second person of interest was at
large but did not elaborate. She also would not discuss a potential
motive or specify what led investigators to believe the shooting was
related to terrorism.
“We have determined that the incident this
morning at the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi is terrorism related,”
Greeves said. “We are working diligently with our state, local and
federal partners on this investigation, which is fluid and evolving.”
The
FBI’s field office in Houston has taken the lead on the investigation,
and neither investigators nor the Navy provided details on the shooter
or a possible motive. Attorney General William Barr has also been
briefed, a Justice Department spokeswoman said.
The injured sailor
was discharged from a hospital where she was treated for minor
injuries, according to a statement from the command.
The air
station is surrounded by water on three sides and is home to Naval pilot
training since 1941, according to its website. Marine Corps, Navy, U.S.
Coast Guard student pilots train there. It’s also home to the Corpus
Christi Army Depot, a depot for the Department of Defense rotary wing
aircraft.
The station had a similar lockdown last December. In another incident at the base last year, a man pleaded guilty
to destruction of U.S. government property and possession of a stolen
firearm for ramming his truck into a barricade at the Corpus Christi
station.
The shooting also comes months after a Saudi Air Force
officer who was training at a Navy base in Pensacola, Florida, killed
three U.S. sailors and wounded eight other people in a shooting that
American officials described as an act of terrorism. The country’s top
federal law enforcement officials said this week that the gunman in
December’s attack, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, had been in touch with
al-Qaida operatives about planning and tactics in the months before the
shooting. Alshamrani was killed by a sheriff’s deputy.
According to U.S. officials, unlike Pensacola, there are no international or foreign national students at the Texas base. The military put a number of new safety procedures in place after the Pensacola shooting to restrict and better screen international students.
Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Colleen Long in Washington, Jill Zeman in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this report.