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| Near the center left, the chairs and Station 13 at the Soldier Readiness Center Click the image to enlarge the image (sketch by Brigitte Woosley) |
Ft.
Hood – Ted Coukoulis recognized Major Nidal Malik Hasan the moment
he saw him.
He
had been in his part of the building – the inoculations station –
only the week prior and started a big argument over a flu shot.
He
couldn't remember what kind of smallpox inoculation he'd had, and if
he took a flu shot, he could have had a very bad reaction. As the
argument grew more heated, he had Maj. Hasan go to the Officer in
Charge to take up the discussion with her.
The
bottom line, recalled Mr. Coukoulis was this. Hasan would either have
a flu shot, or he wouldn't be able to deploy. Someboy had a problem,
and it wasn't the Officer In Charge of the Soldier Readiness Program.
But
that wasn't the end of the story.
By
the time Nov. 5, 2009, ended, Mr. Coukoulis told the jury of
high-ranking officers, he found himself trying to help a pair of
female medical technicians treat Lt. Col. Juanita L. Warman – to no
avail.
Her
back, he explained, was spraying blood from a line of through and
through exit wounds that ran down her spine “like a soaker garden
hose.”
A
witness who testified earlier told jurors how the Colonel told her to
let her family know she loved them, and to go on and treat others who
could make it. She knew, she told her would-be rescuers, that she was
a goner.
But
this testimony paled in comparison to Mr. Coukoulis' recollection of
watching as Maj. Hasan strolled up to three soldiers who were pinned
down point blank in front of a large refrigerator used to store
medicines, and casually shot them to death – one – two - three.
He
took refuge underneath a desk, and when Hasan returned, he watched as
the red tendrils of the laser sight snaked across the floor to find
him.
“I
opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue. I thought it would be easier
to clean up my brains if I had mouth open.”
And
then, inexplicably, Hasan raised up and walked away. “Clack, clack,
clack,” said Mr. Coukoulis, imitating the sound of Hasan's boots
slapping the blood-slickened floor.
Like
most of the 18 witnesses who appeared, he, too, thought the shootings
were part of a training exercise, “until the smoke started to come
in over the dividers” between cubicles. “Then I knew it was
real.”
His
recollection echos that of Lt. Col. Randy Royer, a National Guard
officer from a Birmingham, Alabama, logistics unit that was scheduled
to deploy to Afghanistan. He saw three flashes of light out of the
corner of his eye and heard someone yell “Allahu Akbar.”
“I
thought it was some kind of training scenario. When I seen those
flashes of light, I didn't waste no time. North Fort Hood is set up
for that. If you've ever been to Fort Hood, you know.”
At
that point, “my arm and leg started hurting real bad.”
By
that time, it had become “deathly silent” in the building,”
said Col. Royer.
In
a bizarre twist, a man in a mortar board cap and gown stepped up to
him and asked if he could walk. “They'd had some kind of graduation
in there,” at the sports dome next door. Some soldiers and some
nurses helped give him first aid.
They
carried him out on a table.
Specialist
Kassidy Givens thought the same thing – a training exercise using
live fire blanks, until he bent over to get one of boot laces to use
for a tourniquet, and found 3 charred holes in his trouser leg. He
was not wounded, but when he looked out the window, he saw a female
soldier running a zig zag pattern past the building next door. Puffs
of red dust from where the bullets were striking the brick followed
her.
Sgt.
Mick Engnehel thought his wounds in the tip of a finger on his right
hand and a through and through wound that entered the back of his
left leg and exited on the right side of his waist were caused by the
impact of rubber bullets. Until he put his hand up to his right ear
and it came away bloody.
“They
didn't give me anything to use for blood. It was my own blood,” he
concluded.”
Testimony
resumes Tuesday morning, August 13, at 9 a.m.
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