13 dead, including a shooter, at Navy Yard.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Thirteen people, including one a shooter, are confirmed dead and at least a dozen more were left injured in a mass shooting that occurred at Navy Yard in Washington, DC on Monday.
President Barack Obama spoke with the press Monday afternoon, saying “We still don’t know all the facts. But we do know that several people have been shot and some have been killed.”
DC Police shot and killed one of the suspects after a lengthy search and pursuit, while authorities believe one more may still be at large as of Monday evening. The dead perpetrator has been identified by authorities as Aaron Alexis, a 34 year-old military contractor from Texas with a history of insubordination. He enlisted with the Navy in 2007, and was able to rise as far as a 3rd Class Aviation Electrician’s Mate.
His most recent job was working as an IT contractor with the Navy, splitting his time between Texas and New York. In 2010, he had been arrested in his Fort Worth, Texas apartment for allegedly firing his weapon through the ceiling, an accusation he claimed was an accident. The charge did not end up getting prosecuted.
The Navy Yard, located in southeast Washington, DC, is the oldest on-shore post of the US Navy. Established in 1799, it is no longer an active military site, but it does still function in an administrative capacity for the US Navy. The facility employs roughly 60,000 civilian and military employees and has an annual federal budget of $30 billion.
The location of the attack — an important American site that’s walking distance from the Nationals baseball stadium and less than four miles from the White House itself — as well as the fact that it occurred only five days after the anniversary of 9/11, was of grave concern to Washingtonians on this overcast Monday.
“It’s scary,” said one Washingtonian who spoke on condition of anonymity, to The American Bazaar. “You can never be too careful, especially in this city.”
“People are always going to try to bring America down,” said someone else. “I feel terrible for the families of the victims, these people just died for no reason.”
The entire Navy Yard area of Washington was on lockdown for several hours following the first shots around 8:20am. Reagan National Airport was forced to temporarily suspend air traffic by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and eight public schools in the District underwent lockdown protocols.
A Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team and a team from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives were at the scene looking for the shooter soon after the initial shots were fired. Alexis was killed in the earlier in the afternoon but his identity was not released for several hours.
A motive for the attack has yet to be determined. As with the Boston Marathon bombing earlier this year, it seems that sometimes America’s worst villains are bred domestically.
Washington, DC is no stranger to violent crime. In 2012, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ranked DC as the 8th most dangerous city in the US to live in (cities had to have a population of at least a half million residents), with at least 88 murders occurring in that year.
Violent crime in general spiked 40% in 2012, with a particular increase in gunpoint robberies. Before the end of February 2013, the District had already seen ten homicides.
Today’s shootings will more than likely jump-start the gun control debate in Congress, which stalled after experiencing a brief surge following the Newtown, Connecticut tragedy of last December. Obama, a staunch gun control advocate, will face stiff resistance from Republicans.
Vincent Gray, mayor of DC, is a Democrat who believes very strongly in gun control, but has faced backlash from DC residents over the difficulty of obtaining a firearm in an increasingly dangerous city. Earlier this year, in response to the Newtown tragedy, Gray was quoted by the Washington Post that he could not imagine such a shooting spree occurring in DC because of how strict the gun laws are.
The names of those killed in today’s attack have not yet been released to the public. More information will be released by DC Metropolitan Police in the coming days.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com