Thread: MASS SHOOTING AT WASHINGTON NAVY YARD

Navy Yard shooter was dumped by Thai crush

By Erin Calabrese and Bob Fredericks
September 17, 2013 | 2:30pm

The madman who massacred a dozen people at the Washington Navy Yard fell hard for a woman he met on a trip to Thailand – but she dumped him when he invited her back the US to shack up.

Aaron Alexis visited the Asian country for about 45 days in 2012, supposedly to improve his language skills and learn about Thai culture, according to Nutpisit Suthamtewakul, the owner of a Thai restaurant in Texas, where Alexis worked.
But instead, “he went to massage parlors,” chased women, and developed a serious “crush” on one particular female, Suthamtewakul told Britain’s channel 4.
But when she scorned him, the troubled Navy vet said it was because the woman “didn’t like black people,” Suthamtewakul said.
Alexis, 34, worked for three years as a deliveryman and waiter at the Happy Bowl Thai restaurant in Fort Worth, where he roomed with Suthamtewakul, until two months ago when the restaurateur got hitched.
The gunman was a regular at the Wat Busaya Dhammavanaram Meditation Center of Fort Worth, according to head monk Kasem Pundisto, 51.

“He just upset with his life and need to be going to the monk, seeking something like happiness,” the monk said.
Pundisto said that Alexis lived for a time in a house behind the Buddhist temple and would come to hour-long meditation sessions two or three times a week.
But Som Sak Srisan, 57, who owned the house, said Alexis was looking for more than enlightenment.
“He tried looking for Thai lady. He tried to catch lady in temple,” he said.
Another monk, Pra Samor Nathathammo, said the psycho was less interested in religion than in learning the language.
“All he said was that he could speak Thai and he had a girlfriend in Thailand. He was here to learn Thai, not really an interest in religion, but to learn Thai or the culture,” the monk said.
http://nypost.com/2013/09/17/navy-yard-shooter-was-dumped-by-thai-crush/

Aaron Alexis: An adept Buddhist chanter and an angry man with a gun

Co-workers and Buddhist monks at his temple say Aaron Alexis was gentle, though upset over perceived slights. But his former neighbor feared for her life.

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske and David ZucchinoSeptember 16, 2013, 11:06 p.m.

WHITE SETTLEMENT, Texas — To Kristi Suthamtewakul, Aaron Alexis was a gentle young man who taught himself to speak Thai for his waiter's job and chanted Thai prayers at a Buddhist temple. Alexis wore a golden amulet of Buddha around his neck, she recalled, yet also carried a concealed .45-caliber handgun.

To a Fort Worth neighbor and a Seattle construction worker, Alexis — accused of gunning down workers at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday — was a brooding, menacing figure quick to brandish and fire a gun.
Alexis, 34, a former Navy electrician's mate working as a government subcontractor, was shot and killed by police after he gunned down 12 people, authorities said. He left behind questions not only about his motives but about who he was and what might have set off the rampage.
"There was nothing sinister about him," said Suthamtewakul, 35, who helps run her family's Thai restaurant outside Fort Worth where Alexis worked as a waiter and deliveryman.
PHOTOS: At the scene of Navy Yard shooting
Suthamtewakul recalled Alexis celebrating Christmas and New Year's with her and her husband, Nutpisit, singing a karaoke version of "(I Can't Help) Falling In Love With You."
Alexis was generally easygoing, she said in an interview at the family restaurant, the Happy Bowl in White Settlement. But he bristled when describing his service in the Navy and the benefits he believed had been withheld.
"He just felt slighted by what he was getting each month," she said.
Alexis was frustrated, she said, that he couldn't contribute more to household bills while he was living with Suthamtewakul and her husband, whom Alexis met at a Buddhist temple.
"He was upset, but not to the degree he would do something like this," she said, referring to the shooting. "I'm still really confused."
But Nutpisit Suthamtewakul said Alexis drank alcohol, always carried a gun and "acted childish — not like a 34-year-old."
Federal agents interviewed him about Alexis on Monday, he said. "I told them I didn't see any sign."
Alexis seemed to hold grudges. He was upset over a salary dispute with his employer, a government subcontractor called The Experts, according to an official close to the investigation.
Witnesses describe the rampage
Alexis was investigated by police in Fort Worth and Seattle for firing a handgun in incidents involving disputes with a neighbor and a construction worker. He also had a string of Navy disciplinary infractions leading up to his discharge in January 2011. But there was little indication from his available public record that he was capable of escalating from petty disputes to a mass shooting.
A woman who lived upstairs from Alexis in Fort Worth told police in September 2010 that he had harangued her about supposed noises from her apartment and confronted her in the parking lot. Police said Alexis fired a shot into the woman's floor from his apartment below. He told police his handgun had gone off as he was cleaning it, but the woman said she thought the shooting was deliberate.
"She is terrified of Aaron and feels this was done intentionally," a police report said.
In Seattle in 2004, a construction worker told police that Alexis had stared at him and fellow workers every day for a month — and occasionally brandished a handgun — at a construction site next to Alexis' residence. The worker said he had never spoken to Alexis, but Alexis suddenly fired three shots from a Glock 30 handgun into the worker's parked car one day in May 2004.
Alexis later told police that the worker had "mocked" and "disrespected" him. He said he had experienced an anger-fueled "blackout" and did not recall the shooting until an hour later, according to the police report. Seattle police said Alexis' father told them his son had "anger management problems," according to a police department blog.
Alexis said he had been present during the Sept. 11 attacks and that "those events had disturbed him," the police report said.
He was arrested in both shooting cases, but was not prosecuted. No one was hurt in either incident.
Suthamtewakul said that Alexis had expressed anger about Sept. 11 to her, but that he was angry at terrorists.
"The way he talked about 9/11, he just didn't seem like the kind of person to do this,'' she said. "There was no way I could have foreseen this."
Anthony Little, who said he is married to Alexis' sister, Naomi Alexis, said no one in the family had ever indicated that Aaron had any problems.
"From what I know, he was a regular guy.... I never was close to him," Little told reporters outside the Brooklyn home where Aaron Alexis' mother, Cathleen Alexis, lives.
"My wife had not seen him or spoken to him in some time," Little said. "But from what I do know, he wasn't that type of person."
He added: "I didn't really hear anything that would make me feel like ... somebody should be watching him. No one every mentioned anything about him being aggressive or being this type of way or anything like that."
At the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, two staff members who knew Alexis from the Happy Bowl said he gave no indication of being capable of violence.
"I thought Aaron seemed kind of geeky — didn't seem like a Thai restaurant waiter," columnist Bud Kennedy said in a video uploaded by the newspaper.
Copy editor Sandy Guerra-Cline said in the video that Alexis was "really a sweet and intelligent guy."
"He was like an ex-airman [for the Navy], still had sort of the military bearing about him, but very sweet," Guerra-Cline said. "He's not a guy that talked about guns, or talked about anything violent."
Mike Ritrovato, 50, of Saginaw, Texas, said he knew Alexis and was troubled by his attraction to first-person shooter video games.
"If he had anything bad about him, it was that he was a 35-year-old man playing video games," Ritrovato said — even when Ritrovato and the rest of their friends were watching football together.
At a Buddhist temple outside Fort Worth, two monks chatted quietly with congregants who recalled Alexis from his worship at the temple and could not reconcile him with the man accused of a mass shooting.
Ty Thairintr, 52, a Fort Worth tooling design engineer, said he met Alexis about five years ago, when Alexis was still in the Navy. "He told me he believed he had superior abilities to his co-workers but he didn't get promoted," he said. "He complained about the rank and file not giving him respect."
Alexis felt discriminated against because he was black, he said.
Eventually Alexis planned to become a Buddhist monk, Thairintr said, and was adept at chanting in Thai. "He chanted better than me."
"He was a very devoted Buddhist," said Thairintr's wife, Sasipa, 51. "Buddhism teaches forgiveness, not grudges. That's why we're so shocked."
Ty Thairintr pointed to a golden Buddha amulet hanging from his neck and wondered if investigators had found Alexis' amulet with his body.
"He would not commit mass murder with that on him,'' he said. "If they find that on him, something is wrong."
But if the amulet is missing, his wife said, "It would show he planned it, that he knew it was a sinful thing to do."
Ty Thairintr pointed to garlands on the tree limbs, and to a stray cat.
"We would not hurt any living thing," he said. "I don't know what was in his mind."
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-navy-shooter-profile-20130917,0,706102,full.story?track=lat-pick

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Navy Yard rampage began with gunman’s colleagues, sources and witnesses say

Radios failed during Navy Yard attack, emergency responders say


By Kevin Bogardus - 09/19/13 05:38 PM ET


Radios for federal firefighters and police officers failed during Monday’s mass shooting at Washington’s Navy Yard, according to union representatives for first responders.

Union officials said police and firefighters resorted to using their cellphones and radios from D.C.’s emergency responders to communicate with each other during the attack.

Anthony Meely, chairman of the Fraternal Order of Police Naval District Washington (NDW) Labor Committee, said police officers who were first on the scene at the Navy Yard had trouble communicating with others in the force via their radios.

Initially, officers found that their radios were working. But as they ventured deeper into the building where the shooting took place, their equipment stopped functioning.

After the first shootout with the gunman, one officer found his radio’s battery was dead, while another officer could not receive a signal from his radio and was unable to call for help. That forced them to use an officer’s cellphone to call others outside the building, according to Meely.

“They had to use their cellphone to just call out and tell them what's going on,” Meely said.

Meely, who was on the scene at Navy Yard and took part in the search for a potential second shooter, said problems with their radios have been “a known issue” on the base with radio batteries not being able to hold charge and being unable to receive signals inside buildings.

The union representative said he thought it was “sad” that police officers had to use a cellphone to call for help.

“I think it's disgusting, unnecessary and sad, but what could they do if the radios weren't working? But that was the only way for them to call and get them some help,” Meely said.

Firefighters were also having problems with their radio signals at the Navy Yard, according to one union official.

Greg Russell, president of the National Capital Federal Firefighters, said his firefighters were on location setting up an incident command post a few doors down from where the shooting took place.

“The incident commander from Naval District Washington was not able to communicate from his position inside the building to fire units outside of the building. He was not able to communicate with his subordinate units outside of the building,” Russell said.

“He had to rely upon the radios that belong to the D.C. Fire Department. He could not deal directly with his own unit on Navy radios,” he said.

A NDW spokesman said the base is undergoing a review of its physical security.

"At this time the NDW focus remains on healing as a Navy family and transitioning to normal operations at the Washington Navy Yard. The Secretary of the Navy has ordered a review of physical security and we will support it fully. Our biggest concern is our Navy family," said Ed Zeigler, NDW's director of public affairs.

Public safety officers on military bases and other federal facilities have long complained about their radios, saying they cannot use them to communicate to each other during emergencies.

Russell, who came down from Annapolis, Md., in response to the shooting, said he went to nearby Bolling Air Force Base and helped debrief fire fighters when they returned from the scene.

He said the federal firefighters’ incident commander’s radio was not powerful enough to hit a transmission tower outside the building. “D.C. Fire, their radios worked appropriately and efficiently from the same building,” he said.

Russell is calling for NDW officials responsible for the radio system to resign.

Radio communications has been a persistent problem for public safety officials, hampering the responses to the 9/11 terrorist attacks as well as Hurricane Katrina.

Emergency responders lobbied Congress successfully to authorize a $7 billion nationwide wireless network — which is not yet in operation— that could help improve radio communications during disasters.

“The FCC will continue to monitor, evaluate and respond as needed to help ensure our nation's communications infrastructure works when people need it most. These are the times when Americans must be able to communicate with family, friends and emergency personnel,” said acting Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn in a speech on Tuesday.

Security at the Navy Yard has come into question following revelations that the identified shooter, former Navy reservist Aaron Alexis, kept his security clearance despite mental health problems and gun-related arrests.

The Pentagon has ordered military-wide reviews of base security and background checks in the wake of the shooting. In addition, several lawmakers on Capitol Hill already plan to hold hearings regarding the security clearance process that helped Alexis enter the base.

— Brendan Sasso contributed.


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