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| Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan depicted by CCTV camera in on-base convenience store on the day of the deadly assault that killed 13, wounded more than 30 persons |
Ft.
Hood – People were surprised, shocked when Maj. Abu Nidal Malik
Hasan opened fire with an ultra-sophisticated semiautomatic handgun.
Sergeant
Davis thought it was a pre-deployment drill when he heard “a
popping” as he waited to receive an inoculation in a cubicle at the
Soldier Readiness Center a few minutes after 1 p.m. on Nov. 5, 2009.
Only
moments before, he told jurors as an Army prosecutor questioned him,
a lady prepared to give him a shot, and then what he heard reminded
him of M-16 rifles shooting blank rounds in a combat simulation
exercise.
“I
honestly thought it was a drill.”
Events
suddenly came into sharp focus, became very real. “I saw somebody
get hit. I saw blood spray. I told the lady who gave me a shot, 'This
is not a drill. They're shooting people up there.'”
As
he spoke, he stared into space, seeing events that occurred more than
3 years in the past as they unfolded in an unseen place only a few
inches in front of his face.
He
and the nurse began to make their way out of the building, heading
for a rear entrance, when he took refuge under a desk with “someone
I don't remember now.”
Sgt.
Davis hid there for “I don't know how long,” when an older man
ran by, shouting “Is somebody going to take this guy out?”
As
he fled, “I heard a young lady screaming, 'My baby, my baby, my
baby...”
Asked
about the rate of fire, he said it was steady, then slapped the
railing of the witness stand before him rapidly. “Pardon me,”
said Col. Tara Osborn, the judge hearing the General Court Martial
for 13 specifications of premeditated murder and 32 of premeditated
attempted murder. She told the court reporter, “The record will
show the witness rapped the rail seven times in staccato fashion.”
Grasping
for his foremost impressions of that day when all hell broke loose,
Sgt. Davis said, “It smelled like gunpowder in there...I heard
somebody yelling Go, go, go!” When he stood up to make a run for
it, “I got hit pretty hard in the back. I fell face first on the
floor.”
When
a lull in the onslaught of withering fire came, he made a run for
Batallion Ave., caught a truck passing by and vaulted into the open
cargo bed, where he tapped on the glass of the rear cab window, and
said, “I'm shot. Would you please take me to the hospital?”
The
driver took him straight to Darnall Army Community Hospital on post.
Asked
where he was wounded, he said he was shot once, in the back.
“Did
you have the bullet removed?”
“Yes.”
Where
was it?
“It
was lodged between the T-7 and C-1 vertabrae,” he replied.
When
was that?
“They
did that in 2011.”
The
judge told him he was permanently dismissed, but to keep his mouth
shut if anyone asks him questions about his testimony until he is
finally released from the summons of the Court's subpoena.
He
received his instructions stoically, standing as straight as a
ramrod, then stalked away to the door that returns to the witness
waiting area, his duty done, his mission accomplished.
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