Pensacola Naval base shooting: Gunman was a military pilot from Saudi Arabia training in the U.S.

[nycbos]

Source: Washington Post

PENSACOLA, Fla. - An assailant opened fire Friday morning at Naval Air Station Pensacola, leaving three people dead and several others injured before Florida sheriff’s deputies shot and killed him in the second deadly shooting at a naval base this week.
The gunman was a military pilot from Saudi Arabia training in the United States, according to a senior U.S. official.

It was unclear whether the three deceased victims were service members or civilians, said Lt. Cmdr. Megan Isaac, a Navy spokeswoman. Multiple people were taken to hospitals, including two Escambia County sheriff’s deputies who are expected to survive, Chief Deputy Chip Simmons said during a Friday morning news conference.

Reports of an active shooting inside an air station classroom came in at 6:51 a.m., drawing a major law enforcement response in the Florida Panhandle city. The base was placed on lockdown, the Navy said, with its gates secured. After about an hour, the sheriff’s office took to Facebook with an announcement: “There is no longer an active shooter on NAS Pensacola. The shooter is confirmed dead.”

The incident shook a community whose identity is deeply entwined with the base, with many residents either employed there or tied to the industry that sprawls alongside Pensacola Bay. The number of personnel assigned there is almost half the population of the city itself.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2019/12/06/naval-station-pensacola-active-shooter/?wpisrc=al_news__alert-national&wpmk=1

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Our "ally"

[gibraltar72]

1. Saudi Arabia you say??

[bullwinkle428]

12. Waiting on that Trump Tweet...waiting...waiting...

[dewsgirl]

20. I think you will be waiting a looong time.

[Igel]

30. And if there was no waiting,

it would be because of a tweet that would be incendiary. "Another Saudi Swedenborgian kills Americans!"

As it is, we're left with the forced assumption that Saudis kill Americans because of the long-standing animosity between the Saudi nationality and US oppression of their homeland.

[dewsgirl]

31. 😔

[keithbvadu2]

26. I make $40 million, $50 million from Saudi Arabia. I like them very much.

Trump, August 2015: I make $40 million, $50 million from Saudi Arabia. I like them very much.

Link to tweet

?ref_src=

[rso]

2. Saudi gunman.

No problem, Donnie and his family have business interests in Saudi Arabia, so he has to keep the murderous Crown Prince happy above all else.

[gab13by13]

5. Also the Saudis have rooms at Trump tower,

they bailed him out so he made a profit.

[getagrip_already]

3. The navy will apologize to bone saw next.....

For killing him. They will be ordered to.

[dware]

17. The Navy didn't kill him

the Sheriff's deputies. did, so he'll probably order the Deputies to apologize.

[Ilsa]

4. The FL Gov. just said the Saudis "need to make things right" (families of victims, etc.).

He said the flight student was there as a representative of the Saudi govt.

[Captain Zero]

10. Oh yeah, he is saying the Saudis are gonna pay up

Just saw him again on MSNBC.

[Ilsa]

11. I modified my post slightly to get the quote right. nt

[Ilsa]

6. I wish we could blame Jared, etc, but we've been training

Last edited Fri Dec 6, 2019, 04:03 PM - Edit history (1)

ME military pilots from different nations for decades. IIRC, we trained Iraqi military pilots in the 1980s, probably much earlier too. I think we've trained SA pilots for decades, too.

[dewsgirl]

21. Yep some of the 9/11 hijackers trained at Flight Safety in

Vero Beach, Fl.

[Jedi Guy]

37. We have indeed trained Saudis for decades.

My old man trained Saudi weapons controllers before Desert Storm broke out, back when he was with 7th ACCS out of Keesler AFB. He didn't have much good to say about them. Evidently the guys in the squadron called them all "princes" because they acted (and expected to be treated like) royalty. Given how ridiculously huge the Saudi royal family is, I guess some of them might've been.

[Ilsa]

45. I heard pretty much the same thing from

Military flight instructors back in the 1980s. IIRC, the female flight instructor (midway through the pipeline, T-44s maybe?) didn't train them if at all possible, but I may be wrong about that. Given that there weren't so many women flying and instructing Navy aviation back then, and there were also Italians, Sunni Iraqis, among the foreign students, I don't think there was much overlap of female instructors with SA aviators.

[soryang]

48. The Saudi pilots were being trained there in 1974

Once upon a time for a brief period I tutored Saudi officers at PCLA in flight training in trig, and aerodynamics.

[Rustyeye77]

7. Oh please

Always blame some middle east guy.

[dware]

18. So you're saying it wasn't a Saudi national that did the shooting?

[Rustyeye77]

23. I'm saying

the first response here and elsewhere is always to blame the ME culture as American hating blood thirsty terrorists .

[christx30]

36. We just blame the guilty person,

and we make parallels between this bad guy and the other Saudi National going to a Florida flight school, Muhammad Atta, the ringleader of 9/11. No one is talking about ME culture. But the parallel is perfectly valid. What else are we supposed to do? It wasn’t a white guy. Wasn’t a Hispanic guy or someone from Japan. It’s a fact that happened, and shouldn’t be brushed under the rug.

[Sapient Donkey]

41. How would you prefer to see this reported then?

Should the nationality not be mentioned? Should they just say a pilot was involved and not mention any specifics? In the article posted, is there any particular sentences you think should have been excluded or perhaps reworded?

[dware]

47. The first response here was NOT to blame the ME culture,

the first response here was to report on the shooting, it only came out in updates that it was a Saudi national that did the shooting.

[Devil Child]

40. Please, let's do just that

Considering the shooter is a Saudi national. As you noted, a “middle east guy.”

[Wuddles440]

8. Would someone....

please explain the reason (yes, I know it's oil and greed) that we continue to support these murderous POS! After 9/11 you think someone would have said enough and declared them an existential threat to this country. Unfucking believable!

[maxrandb]

16. Exxon Mobile?

[dewsgirl]

22. They are Trump's allies.

[Rebl2]

35. I agree!

Why are they still allowed to train in this country after 9/11. It makes no sense, but guess Republicans are okay with it, like Bush and Tump. Disgusting!

[spiderpig]

9. It's Obama's fault. n/t

[IronLionZion]

13. Saudi pilots training in Florida

We've seen this sometime before, haven't we? Around 2001? And then the logical response to 9/11 was wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, tax cuts, bone saws for US permanent resident journalists, and apparently bring over more Saudi pilots for training.

But there will never be any talk of consequences for the Kingdom of Saud, our long time ally, even though the US produces plenty of oil now.

Expect King Bone Saw to send some thoughts and prayers.

[onethatcares]

14. butter emails

for some reason I don't think the 9/11 hijackers friends just gave up and became our friends 30 years ago.

[Midnight Writer]

15. So we are training Saudi Arabians to fly in Florida again?

Who could have imagined that would be a problem?

[BrightKnight]

19. How does foreign national have a weapon on a military base?

I’m sure access to the building is tightly controlled.

IDK, I would think that something like this could and should be prevented at a basic security check point.

[Jedi Guy]

39. Not really something a security checkpoint would've stopped, honestly.

Odds are the Saudi pilots are bunking on the base itself, so they don't have to pass the SPs at the gate. Even if they did, they'd just have to provide ID. The SPs aren't gonna pat them down, and they don't have metal detectors at the gates, much less at the entrances of most buildings. The theory is that they've been vetted and they have access to certain places (like classrooms and training areas) as a result.

I'd be curious to know whether he acquired the weapon locally or brought a Saudi military-issued sidearm with him, though. If they let foreign military personnel come to our bases with weapons, that seems like a policy that needs a second look after this.

[BrightKnight]

49. Site security protects our allies, sensitive information, etc

I don’t need to know how they are managing the details. It is shocking that it could happen because I would expect that the basic measures at many other sites wold prevent something like this. I am sure lots of oversight people are looking at it.

[AtheistCrusader]

24. Saudi pilot training in the US starts killing people, and I still have to take off my fucking shoes

at the airport?

SEEMS LIKE WE'RE CHASING THE WRONG PROBLEM

[turbinetree]

28. And lose an airline job...............................like thousand of us did.......................

[Judi Lynn]

25. ♪I ♪ get ♪ by♪ ♪ with a ♪♪ little ♪ ♪ ♪ help ♪ from ♪♪ my ♪ friends ♪ ...

[Marthe48]

27. Prayers for the victims and their families

This week, I feel like our country has an nra advent calendar. Hope there are no more murder by guns this month.

[Puppyjive]

29. Tesla

It is unfortunate that we are so involved with cultures that are deeply different than ours. We have a reliance on oil. They have a reliance on our military to prevent total chaos and engineers to keep the oil flowing.. Neither of us really care for the other. My first deployment to the Middle East was during Desert Storm. My first thought was we needed alternative fuel sources. We have it now. The fossil fuel industry is fighting us every step of the way.

[braddy]

32. The U.S. is the world's top oil exporter, we don't import much oil from the Middle East or from

anyone.

[Yeehah]

38. That is completely false

The US is not the world's top oil exporter. That would be Saudi Arabia.

Some years, the US is the top producer of oil in the world.

The US is the third highest oil importing country behind the European Union and China.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/company-insights/082316/worlds-top-10-oil-exporters.asp

[braddy]

42. That is old data but in your own article's updated text the U.S is placed at third, it has

surpassed Saudi Arabia as number one at times in the last couple of years and we are now exporting more than we consume and we import little from the Middle East, at this time we may be importing close to zero although some oil is imported and exported because it is a certain type.

[Yeehah]

44. I don't know where to start

Your information is totally inaccurate.

You said: The US exports more than it consumes?!?

[braddy]

46. I meant to say we export more than we import, you should look at the latest info on our oil

situation, we are a net exporter and sometimes the world's top producer. The purpose of your original claim about us and the Middle East was misleading.

The Energy 202: The U.S. just hit a major milestone as a petroleum exporter https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-energy-202/2019/12/03/the-energy-202-the-u-s-just-hit-a-major-milestone-as-a-petroleum-exporter/5de550eb88e0fa652bbbdb19/

America is now the world's top oil producer, but cracks are emerging https://www.channel3000.com/news/america-is-now-the-worlds-top-oil-producer-but-cracks-are-emerging/1140163135

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

33. But do you know how much military equipment Saudi buys from us? - Donny Dotard

[YOHABLO]

34. Don't blame the country, find out about individual's motive.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

43. Here's some local coverage from Pensacola.....

Go to: https://www.pnj.com/

NAS Pensacola shooting: Officials shed light on what investigation has revealed so far
Kevin Robinson, Jim Little and Annie Blanks, Pensacola News Journal Published 6:40 p.m. CT Dec. 6, 2019

Story link: https://www.pnj.com/story/news/2019/12/06/investigation-just-beginning-nas-pensacola-mass-shooting/4354850002/
(snips)

Three victims are dead and at least eight are wounded after an aviation trainee from Saudi Arabia reportedly opened fire in an educational building at Naval Air Station Pensacola on Friday.

Around 6:30 a.m. Friday, security forces from the Navy and deputies from the Escambia County Sheriff's Office converged at NAS Pensacola, a base in the Florida Panhandle that trains many of the Navy’s pilots. After a rampage that spanned two floors of the building, the gunman was shot and killed by two ECSO deputies. The deputies were also wounded in the exchange, but both are expected to recover from their wounds, officials say.
+++
The shooter was identified as Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a member of the Saudi military, a U.S. official told the Associated Press.

and....

Four dead, 8 injured after mass shooting

Three people were declared deceased at the scene, including the shooter, and a fourth person later died in the hospital. Eight people were hospitalized, including the two deputies, and Gov. Ron DeSantis said while the deputies and some other victims were in relatively good shape, others remained in surgery.

Another sad gun violence day in America. RIP to the victims.......