Indian-American Vishnu Pandit was among the 12 people killed by a gunman before he was shot dead by the police in Monday’s rampage at the high-security Washington Navy Yard that has come as a shocking reality check to the US authorities.
The 61-year-old Pandit was a resident of North Potomac in Maryland. All the 12 killed in the shooting, including Pandit, were civilians or contractors, not military personnel. Pandit lived in North Potomac, Maryland, and one of his neighbours described him as “a very nice man with an Irish setter”.
While the authorities initially believed that three armed men were involved in the mass shooting, they have since concluded that it was the handiwork of a lone gunman, identified as Aaron Alexis, 34, of Fort Worth, Texas.
A former US Navy reservist, Alexis had a troubled past, with several run-ins with the police, said reports that pointed to the African-American suspect’s anger management problems and post-traumatic stress disorder issues. After his discharge from the Navy, he started working for a military subcontractor.
The motive for the rampage was still to be established, but the authorities did not suspect terrorism as of now. “We don’t have any reason at this stage to suspect terrorism, but certainly it has not been ruled out,” Washington, DC Mayor Vincent Gray said.
Information compiled on Alexis project him as a man of stark contradictions. Some reports described him as the quiet type who used to pray at a Buddhist temple in Fort Worth, occasionally joining Thai immigrants in meditation.
But a US Navy official had a different account, speaking about the suspect's "pattern of misconduct" that led to his discharge in January 2011 from the Navy, which he had joined as a full-time reservist in May 2007. Some people known to Alexis said he used to complain about being a victim of discrimination in the Navy.
Alexis, it was found, had been arrested at least twice before for weapons violations. In 2004, Seattle police had arresting him for shooting out the tires of another man's vehicle in what was described as an anger-fuelled "blackout". He had also been arrested in Fort Worth in 2010 for discharging a firearm after an upstairs neighbour said he had confronted her in the parking lot about making too much noise.
Questions have been raised on how the man, having been discharged from the Navy more than two years ago, could enter the high-security naval facility in the heart of US capital.
It has been found that Alexis had a valid pass to the Washington Navy Yard, working as an hourly employee for The Expert, a subcontractor for H-P to refresh equipment used on the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet network. He had been in the Washington region for about four months.
Alexis went on his shooting spree around 8.15 am Monday, spraying bullets from the fourth floor down to the cafeteria area in the Naval Sea Systems Command headquarters.
In all, he shot 15 people, 12 fatally, and injured five others, including two police officers, before he died in the police action."We now have a total of 13 fatalities, including the shooter," Mayor Gray told reporters. The deceased victims ranged in age from 46 to 73 years.
Besides Pandit, six other victims were identified: Michael Arnold, 59; Sylvia Frasier, 53; Kathy Gaarde, 62; John Roger Johnson, 73; Frank Kohler, 50; and Bernard Proctor, 46. Five more are yet to be identified. It was the biggest loss of life in a single incident in the Washington region since the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon that killed 184 people.
The Obama White House, which has been working hard to strengthen gun control laws but has not been able to make a vigorous push because of lack of support in the Congress said this daring episode has once again highlighted the need to act fast on this score. "We should take common-sense action that's supported by Americans from every part of the country," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said.