Maj.
Clifford Allen Hopewell, M.D., is a psychiatrist who formerly headed
the Behavioral Health Unit of the Soldier Readiness Program.
Today,
a big part of his job still includes automated computerized testing
of soldiers for traumatic brain injury and certifying them ready for
deployment.
Before
his retirement, he was a colleague of Dr. Abu Nidal Malik Hasan;
though their responsibilities diverged, they were involved in related
practice, he explained from the witness stand on Thursday, just
minutes before Col. Tara Osborne recessed court for the day.
Asked
where he was on Nov. 5, 2009, a few minutes after the lunch hour
ended, he explained that his operation headquartered in three
buildings situated in a row directly behind Building 42003, where the
attack took place.
When
he first heard gunfire, he said, he knew it was semiautomatic weapon
fire, but he thought it came from M-16 rifles.
He
soon learned he was mistaken when he stumbled across an empty
magazine of an unfamiliar type. “I knew it was not from the kind of
sidearm they issue officers in a combat zone,” he told his
questioner. “It wasn't from a Beretta.”
Sure
it was evidence, he picked it up and took it with him to make sure no
one took it away as a keepsake. He later gave it to an Army criminal
investigator.
When
he walked a little further, he saw Major Hasan with a crowd of medics
around him, struggling to keep him alive.
Army
police spotted him and showed him an identity card with Hasan's
picture on it. “They thought he was one of my employees,” he
recalled. “I let them know the man they were treating was the one
in the picture.”
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