Troops from Valley-based military units reported safe after Fort Hood shooting

HARLINGEN — All 155 soldiers with a U.S. Army Reserve unit from Harlingen now stationed at Fort Hood survived Thursday’s attacks without injury, a unit spokesman said.

All were accounted for within eight minutes of the shootings at the Army base outside Killeen in Central Texas, 1st Sgt. Rene Guerra said from a barracks under lockdown at the base late Thursday afternoon.

The shooting rampage left 11 soldiers and a civilian police officer dead and 31 soldiers wounded, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. Police detained but later released three soldiers they initially believed were involved in the shooting. The suspect in the attack, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, had been reported as dead but survived being shot by the civilian police officer. Hasan was hospitalized in the company of a Criminal Investigative Division officer. Army Lt Gen. Robert Cone said Hasan’s death did not appear “imminent.”

About 75 percent of the soldiers with the 812th Quartermaster Company headquartered in Harlingen are from the Rio Grande Valley, Guerra said.

As many as eight of the Valley’s soldiers were in one of the buildings where the shootings occurred, he said. They were able to call in and account for their fellow unit members, none of whom were injured.

Immediately after the shootings, the soldiers were placed under lockdown, Guerra said.

The company has been stationed at Fort Hood since Oct. 18 and is awaiting overseas deployment, he said. The Army does not release information about locations and dates of overseas deployments.

A spokesman for Texas Army National Guard units headquartered in Weslaco said all guardsmen from the Valley are now at Fort Bliss, near El Paso.

Just more than 500 soldiers with the Texas Army National Guard 3rd Battalion, 141st Infantry Regiment were recently stationed at Fort Hood but left on Oct. 3 for Fort Bliss to undergo training. The unit is scheduled to be deployed to Iraq before the end of the year.

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Ed Asher is a deputy metro editor for the Valley Morning Star in Harlingen. Corey Ryan is a reporter for the Valley Morning Star.