‘Heartbroken’ Obama Goes to Fort Hood for Memorial

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- A “heartbroken” President Barack Obama visits Fort Hood, Texas, today to participate in a memorial service for 13 people killed there by a U.S. Army psychiatrist, vowing to ensure “something like this doesn’t happen again.”

After the Nov. 5 shooting rampage, Obama juggled his schedule to make the ceremony, delaying his departure for Asia by a day. He is now scheduled to leave Nov. 12 for an eight-day trip to Japan, Singapore, China and South Korea, his first to Asia as president.

Obama said in an interview with ABC News yesterday that he wants to go to the central Texas military base to “personally express the incredible heartbreak that we all feel.”

“The second thing that I can absolutely commit to is that we are going to complete this investigation, and we are going to take whatever steps are necessary to make sure that something like this doesn’t happen again,â€

Vice President Joe Biden is scheduled to attend a memorial service today at Fort Lewis, Washington, for U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan Oct. 27.

At Fort Hood, the president and first lady Michelle Obama will meet privately with families of the dead as well as the wounded soldiers and their families. Obama then will address the greater Fort Hood community.

Earlier Mass Murder

The mass shootings at the base put the community at the center of a national tragedy for the second time in less than two decades.

On the afternoon of Oct. 16, 1991, George Hennard shook the neighboring military town of Killeen when he drove his pickup truck through the plate-glass window of the Luby’s Cafeteria in the middle of the town and opened fire, killing 23 people before taking his own life.

Eighteen years later and about 10 miles away in neighboring Fort Hood, the largest military base in the U.S., Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a psychiatrist who was scheduled to deploy shortly to Afghanistan, fired on fellow soldiers in a crowded medical center. The Nov. 5 shooting rampage also wounded 30.

This tragedy “will have a long-lasting effect,” state Representative Sid Miller, Republican of Stephenville, told reporters two days after the incident. “This community is still reeling from the 1991 Luby’s shooting.”

‘Bloodbath in Killeen’

The Houston Chronicle, reporting witness accounts of the 1991 shooting the next day in an article headlined “Bloodbath in Killeen,” said Hennard, 35, “calmly and methodically strolled through the cafeteria, randomly shooting innocent people as they crouched under tables. Often he would stick the gun at a victim’s head or body and fire.”

The newspaper cited a police officer saying the restaurant afterward looked like a slaughterhouse or a scene from a movie. “There are bodies scattered throughout the entire cafeteria,” the officer said. “The floor is covered with broken glass, bullet holes, bullet fragments, blood. It’s almost a surrealistic, nightmarish scene.”

Until the massacre at Virginia Tech University in 2007, the Luby’s incident was the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

Luby’s has changed names several times and is now a Chinese restaurant called Yank Sing Buffet. Robert Keating, a Killeen resident for the past 20 years, has observed the updates and says no change to the building would be enough to lure him back.

“Once that happened, I never did go back in the doors,” said Keating, 59, who moved with his wife to her hometown of Killeen after retiring in 1989. “You go by there. You know exactly what happened,” he said.

One-Time Home to Elvis

Killeen is in central Texas about 60 miles north of Austin, the capital. Its population was pegged at 86,911 at the time of the 2000 census.

The town is famous for having been a one-time home to Elvis Presley and Chicago Bears defensive tackle Tommie Harris Jr.

Since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, Killeen and the surrounding area have been beset by crime and violence, according to the New York Times.

Reports of domestic abuse have grown by 75 percent since 2001, and violent crime in Killeen has risen 22 percent while declining 7 percent in similar-sized towns elsewhere in the U.S., the newspaper reported.

Since 2003, there have been 76 suicides by personnel assigned to Fort Hood, with 10 this year, according to U.S. Army statistics.

Links to Military

Keating, who served in the military, said roughly nine out of 10 residents in the area are now in the military or used to be.

“It’s a good place to live if you can deal with the military,” he said. “I don’t see myself going anywhere else.”

Julian Lee, 31, served two years in the military starting in 1999 and lived in Fort Hood. He said he likes the area and doesn’t think the Fort Hood shooting should hurt Killeen’s image.

“That’s not our fault; that’s Fort Hood’s fault,” Lee said as he sat outside the former Luby’s restaurant smoking a cigarette. “I feel a connection to this area.”

At a chapel service in Fort Hood on Nov. 8, parishioners gathered to mourn and search for answers. Many found themselves asking the same question they asked in 1991.

“To me, the focus is how do we bring people together with reality of what’s going on and how do we support and stand and encourage them at this time?” Colonel Frank Jackson, an Army chaplain, told reporters before leading the service at the 73rd Street Chapel.

Keating said he is confident people around town ultimately will get over the incident.

“You just move on,” he said. “It’s just something that unfortunately happens.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Edwin Chen in Washington at EChen32@bloomberg.net David Wethe in Killeen, Texas, at dwethe@bloomberg.net