Facts about Nidal Hasan
Nidal Malik Hasan Biography
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is the U.S. Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 12 fellow soldiers and a civilian in a shooting spree at Fort Hood in Texas on 5 November 2009. Hasan was born in Virginia to Palestinian immigrants. He graduated from Virginia Tech in 1995 and enlisted in the Army, receiving a medical degree from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. He then specialized in psychiatry and was assigned to Fort Hood in 2009. He was later described by colleagues as a devout Muslim who was angered by American military action in Muslim countries and didn’t want to be deployed to Afghanistan. At about 1:20 pm on 5 November 2009, Hasan entered a processing center at Fort Hood and began shooting, killing 13 people and wounding 38 others. Two civilian police officers from the base, Sgt. Kimberly Munley and Sgt. Sgt. Mark Todd, arrived on the scene and exchanged fire with Hasan. Hasan was left critically injured, but survived. (His lawyer stated on 13 November that Hasan was paralyzed from the waist down.) Hasan was the only suspect in the shootings and proudly admitted fault. He was convicted in August of 2013 on 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder, and sentenced to death.
Extra credit
Hasan is single and has no children… Fort Hood is in central Texas, between Waco and Austin and near the town of Killeen… Sgt. Munley was shot and seriously injured by Hasan, but also survived; Sgt. Todd was not wounded… 12 of those killed were active-duty soldiers; one, Michael Cahill, was a physician’s assistant who worked on the base and had previously served in the National Guard and U.S. Army Reserves. Those killed ranged in age from 19 to 62, and in rank from private to lieutenant colonel.