Springs woman tells of tragedy at Fort Hood

Leslie Edmonds, of Colorado Springs, was just a building away when Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire Thursday in the Fort Hood soldier readiness center, killing 13 people and wounding 30.

She never even heard the gunshots.

“They told us there had been an incident,” she said. “I’m sure people outside (the post) knew more about the shooting than we did.”

From inside Howze Theater, where Edmonds was among a crowd gathering for a annual graduation ceremony recognizing soldiers who had earned academic honors, emergency sirens were the earliest signs of the tragedy. Soon, first responders entered the theater, hunting for possible shooters, and then the building was locked down.

Soldiers stood guard at the exits as the ceremony resumed, somberly, later in the afternoon, she said.

“Some of the people were really happy for their soldiers, and we clapped and were happy for them,” she said. “There were a couple people who didn’t have a cap and gown on because they got called to help with the triage. They had to get rid of them because they were soiled, bloodied.”

Edmonds, the Veterans Affairs coordinator at Colorado Technical University in Colorado Springs, had flown to the Texas Army post to be present as a command sergeant major was honored for a master’s degree he was awarded through the university.

Edmonds missed her return flight and rescheduled for a day later.

“I felt kind of trapped in the building, but yet I felt secure,” she said. “I was just really happy to get away from it.”
“There wasn’t a lot of panic,” she added, noting that Fort Hood personnel went about guard duty and emergency triage with little emotion.  “It’s the military, and there was just the calm of, well, This is what we have to do.”

Hasan, 39, who was wounded by first-responders during the attack, remained in an intensive care unit at Brook Medical Center in San Antonio on Saturday.  
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