By Margaret Voelzke
As a more complete profile of Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis emerges, so do the accounts of civilian witnesses who were near Monday’s massacre.
Nick Morrison is a legislative assistant who lives 1 ½ blocks from where police say Alexis killed 12 people and injured eight others. Morrison was preparing to leave for work when police told residents of his block to shelter in place and began setting up a police perimeter.
“We thought [at first] that there was a gunman in our neighborhood, so we thought that’s what the helicopters were for a while,” Morrison told The Rockbridge Report by telephone. “We thought they were looking in our alleyways and … on our block.”
Morrison and a roommate watched from their apartment building’s roof as news media vans arrived. It was then that the situation became clearer.
“We didn’t realize how serious the situation was until we realized how large the death toll was,” he said.
Lexington/Rockbridge General District Judge Gordon Saunders’ brother was inside the Navy Yard complex when the shootings occurred but was not harmed, Saunders’ assistant said. Saunders could not be reached for comment.
For employees at the U.S. Department of Transportation, located next to the Navy Yard, fear of the shooter was instantaneous.
“Our building is so close to the Navy Yard, I thought ‘What if one of the other shooters [was] hiding out in our building?’” said one employee, who asked to remain unidentified because she is still concerned for her safety.
“It was just manic,” she said. “Obviously no one expected that to happen, just going to work on a Monday.”
But for the employee and some of her coworkers, live media coverage via Google and Twitter provided comfort and relief from the unknown.
“We started gathering news information, and I went on Twitter trying to figure out what happened,” she said. “And we realized shortly after that that there was an active gunman … At that point it was just a scramble for information, whatever we could get our hands on.”
Although Alexis’ motive remains unknown, law enforcement officials and others have described him as a man who heard voices and believed he was being followed. While staying at a Newport, R.I., hotel early last month, he complained that he had heard voices harassing him, wanting to harm him, investigators said.
News reports said he told police in Rhode Island he couldn’t sleep. He believed people were following him, using a microwave machine to send vibrations to his body, according to law enforcement sources. He changed hotels once, then again. But he called police and told them he couldn’t get away from the voices, according to news reports.
A Buddhist convert who had also had flare-ups of rage, Alexis, a black man who grew up in New York City and whose last known address was in Fort Worth, Texas, also complained about the Navy and being a victim of discrimination.
He also had run-ins with the law over firearms discharges in 2004 and 2010 in Texas and Seattle, and was ticketed for disorderly conduct after being thrown out of an Atlanta area nightclub in 2008, according to news reports.
Alexis’ bouts of insubordination, disorderly conduct and missing work without authorization prompted the Navy to grant him an early — but honorable — discharge in 2011 after nearly four years as a full-time reservist, authorities said. During his service, he repaired aircraft electrical systems at Fort Worth.
In addition to those killed at the Navy Yard attack, eight people were hurt, including three who were shot and wounded, authorities said. Those three were a police officer and two female civilians, authorities said. They were all expected to survive.
Monday’s attack was the deadliest at a domestic military installation since November 2009, when an Army psychiatrist killed 13 people and wounded 30 others at Fort Hood, Texas.
Later on Monday, Morrison watched as Navy Yard employees were bused from the scene to nearby Nationals Stadium to reunite with anxious family members. The riders looked “tired and hungry” and rode with bowed heads.
“It was surreal,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.