Indian American among 13 killed in US mass shooting

A 61-year-old Indian American man is among 12 people who were killed by a gunman in a deadly mass shooting at a naval base in the heart of the US capital Monday.

Fourteen other people were injured, while the gunman, identified as Aaron Alexis, 34, of Fort Worth, Texas, was later killed in a gun battle with security at the sprawling Washington Navy Yard complex in Southeast Washington not too far from the Capitol and the White House. 

Vishnu Pandit, an Indian origin man, was identified Monday night along with six other victims: Michael Arnold, 59; Sylvia Frasier, 53; Kathy Gaarde, 62; John Roger Johnson, 73; Frank Kohler, 50; and Kenneth Bernard Proctor, 46.

No further details were available about the victims. Alexis who received a general discharge in 2011 from the Navy Reserve, was arrested but not charged in a gun incident in Seattle in back 2004 but still had a security clearance with a military contractor that would have allowed him access to the Navy Yard, officials said.

Meanwhile, the survivors of Monday’s deadly mass shooting recalled harrowing scenes of panic, improvisation and personal loss. ‘It was like pop, pop, pop. And in a few seconds it stopped and then pop, pop, pop, pop, we were just flailing,’ Patricia Ward, a logistics management specialist who was at the Navy Yard cafeteria when the shooting took place, was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

Witnesses said a gunman opened fire from a fourth-floor overlook on people in the cafeteria of Building 157. Others spoke of a gunman firing in a third-floor hallway. It was not clear whether they were describing the same gunman or separate ones. 

‘All the people that were in the cafeteria, we all panicked. We were trying to decide on which way we were going to run out. People that were working in the cafeteria wanted to stay there and hide but I just ran,’ said Ward, after she was rescued.

‘A few of us just ran out of the side exit, there we saw the security guard. She told us to run to shelter and keep running. Someone had put on the fire alarm. That’s when I heard police flood, everybody was just coming and the call of sirens.’

At about the same time, Naval Capt. Mark Vandroff was conducting his department’s usual 8 a.m. meeting in a third-floor conference room.

‘Once we heard the gunshots, and realized they were gunshots, we got down on the floor, closed the door to the conference room, barricaded ourselves in. We took a big conference table, flipped it over and wedged it up the door. Then we got away from the door, thinking that was the safest thing,’  Vandroff told Xinhua.

Vandroff said people in the conference room remained calm and used their smart phones to tell people they were okay, while finding out if their other colleagues were safe. ‘The real excitement was some number of minutes later, around 8.30 a.m., when we heard gunfire very close to us. We looked up and we saw bullet holes on the top of the wall of the conference room,’ ,’said Vandroff.

‘The fact that I lost a friend Tuesday is still processing. I don’t know. I’ll go home and think about it tonight,’ added Vandroff. Shanika Hult, a resident whose home is about two blocks from the shooting spot, told Xinhua she felt afraid and shaken because the shooting was so close by.