05 March 2010

Updates on Pentagon Gunman

Wow - it's amazing how quickly news breaks and it followed up in the age of the internet. Right now it looks like the Pentagon gunman was after some sort of 'truth' about 9/11.

Bedell, 36, died Thursday night from head wounds received in a volley of fire with police. Keevill said the two injured officers and another officer who came to their assistance fired upon Bedell at the subway entrance into the Pentagon building in Arlington, Va.

"He came here from California," Keevill said. "We were able to identify certain locations that he spent that last several weeks making his way from the West coast to the East coast."

Noting that Bedell was wearing a suit, Keevill said: "There was no indication based on the way he was dressed that he had hostile intent."

The exchange of fire lasted less than a minute but, numerous shots were fired, Keevill said, adding that he didn't know how many because investigators were "still counting." Bedell was not wearing body armor, he added.

The two officers injured have been released from the hospital. One suffered a thigh wound and the other was hit in the shoulder. Keevill said both were superficial injuries.

Keevill said he did not know the shooter's motive.

"I have no idea what his intentions were," said Keevill, who had late Thursday described the attack in this way:

"He just reached in his pocket, pulled out a gun and started shooting" at point-blank range. "He walked up very cool. He had no real emotion on his face."

Beverly Fields, chief of staff of the D.C. medical examiner's office, confirmed the man's death and said his body arrived at her office shortly after midnight.

Signs emerged that Bedell harbored ill feelings toward the government and the armed forces, and had questioned the circumstances behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In an Internet posting, a user by the name JPatrickBedell wrote that he was "determined to see that justice is served" in the death of Marine Col. James Sabow, who was found dead in the backyard of his California home in 1991. The death was ruled a suicide but the case has long been the source of theories of a cover up.

Keevill said Friday that authorities had not made "a final determination" that the shooter was the same Bedell.


By: Brant

No comments: