Pentagon police wounded in gun attack

A man calmly drew a gun and fired at the tube station entrance to the Pentagon complex, shooting two police officers before being fatally wounded.

The two officers received grazing wounds and were being treated in a hospital, said Richard Keevill, chief of Pentagon police. Authorities had no motive for the shooting.

The suspect, believed to be a US citizen, walked up to a security checkpoint at the Pentagon in an apparent attempt to get inside the massively fortified Defence Department headquarters at about 6.40pm yesterday, local time (11.40pm Irish Time).

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

The Pentagon officers returned fire with semi-automatic weapons, critically injuring the gunman, who later died, the medical examiner’s office said.

The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon – the US capital’s ground zero on September 11 2001 – came four months after a deadly attack on the army’s Fort Hood, Texas, post, allegedly by a US Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings.

In the immediate aftermath early today, investigators did not think terrorism was involved but were not ruling it out and did not discuss possible motives.

President Barack Obama was “closely following the case” and getting updates from the FBI through his homeland security and counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan“, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said today.

Law enforcement officials identified the suspect as John Bedell, 36. They also said they were speaking to a second man who might have accompanied the gunman and were running his name through databases.

The tube station is immediately adjacent to the Pentagon building, a five-sided northern Virginia colossus across the Potomac River from Washington.

Since a redesign following the September 11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, passengers can no longer disembark directly into the building.

They must take a long escalator ride to the surface from the underground station, then pass through a security check outside the doors of the building, where further security awaits.

After last night’s attack all Pentagon entrances were secured then all were reopened except one from the tube, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. He said the tube entrance was likely to remain closed overnight at least.

Mr Keevill said the gunman gave no clue to the officers at the checkpoint about what he was going to do.

“There was no distress,” he said. “When he reached into his pocket, they assumed he was going to get a pass and he came up with a gun.”

“He wasn’t pretending to be anyone. He was wearing a coat and walked up and just started shooting.”

Mr Keevill added: “We have layers of security and it worked. He never got inside the building to hurt anyone.”

A Pentagon official working late in the building said people inside first heard of the shooting on television. They were later told the building was locked down and to stay in place.

Then at around 7.30pm they heard an announcement on the public address system that they could leave through Corridor 3 – one widely used to get access to one of the car parks.

There were signs that Bedell may have harboured resentment for the military and had doubts about the facts behind the September 11 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 colonel James Sabow, who was found dead in the back garden 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.

The user named JPatrickBedell wrote that the Sabow case was “a step towards establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions.”

That same posting railed against the US government’s enforcement of marijuana laws and included links to the author’s 2006 court case in Orange County, California, for cultivating marijuana and resisting a police officer.

Court records available online show the date of birth on the case mentioned by the user matches that of the John Patrick Bedell suspected in the shooting.