1.
GUNMAN KILLS WOMAN, THEN HIMSELF AT FT. LEWIS PX
By Scott Fontaine and Mike Archibold
News Tribune (Tacoma, WA)
July 22, 2009 (1558 PDT -- updated 2052 PDT)
http://www.thenewstribune.com/topstory/story/818795.html
A retired soldier from Lakewood shot and killed a woman working at Fort Lewis’ main post exchange Wednesday and then fatally wounded himself.
The woman, a civilian vendor working inside the PX, was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at Madigan Army Medical Center. The gunman, a 59-year-old former sergeant first class, died hours later.
The identities of both are being withheld, pending family notification. Post officials would not say what the relationship between the gunman and victim was or speculate on a motive.
A family friend -- and employee of the News Tribune -- told the newspaper the victim was Sharlona White.
White’s mother, Rose Braggs, said she learned through news reports that her daughter, who was in her 30s, had died after being shot about 11:30 a.m. while working at her kiosk at the PX.
“He killed my baby,” Braggs said in a telephone interview from her Tacoma home Wednesday afternoon. “My baby’s gone.”
Braggs said believed the man who shot her daughter was a former boyfriend who White had left seven months ago. “She didn’t want him,” Braggs said. “She was trying hard to get away from him. He just wouldn’t give her up.”
Braggs said the ex-boyfriend had threatened her daughter before and had told her he was going to kill himself.
“We called the police and everything,” she said. “We kept on saying (to her) get a restraining order.”
Braggs said her daughter, a Foss High School graduate, worked “all the time, seven days a week” to support herself and her two children, ages 10 and 14.
“She was a wonderful person,” Braggs said.
White was working in her kiosk Wednesday when she was killed.
The shots, as many as five fired from a single weapon, sparked panic in the Wal-Mart-size shopping center, whose shops and fast-food restaurants were jammed for the daily lunch rush.
Kathy Johnson and her mother, Kazui Miller, were shopping on opposite sides of the PX when the shooting started.
“Everyone ran in every direction,” said Johnson, a 44-year-old Tacoma native who now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. “Everyone was yelling, ‘Call 9-1-1!’ ”
Johnson dived under a rack of women’s clothes and tried calling the police. The line was busy. She tried again.
“It just rang and rang and rang,” she said. “So I called my husband back home, and he called 9-1-1 and was patched through to the Fort Lewis operator.”
A woman sat beside her under the rack, screaming and sobbing uncontrollably, Johnson said.
“Everyone in the store thought it was a mass shooting because of the number of gunshots,” she said. “My heart was racing. We weren’t sure if a gunman was coming for us.”
Military policemen arrived at the kiosk about five minutes after the shooting, Garcia said. The man had already shot himself when the MPs arrived.
Around them the store soon fell quiet, the silence broken only by the woman’s screams and the music over the intercom, Johnson said. Minutes later a voice came over a loudspeaker and told everyone to evacuate to the back of the store.
The woman next to Johnson was still in hysterics.
“She kept saying, ‘Oh, my God, I’m about to die,’” Johnson said, adding she shook her enough to run out of the store with her.
Chaplains soon arrived to provide counseling. Police evacuated the scene, closed the PX and cordoned off the area. Gus Tarantino was going to meet his wife, an Army psychologist, for lunch at 11:30 a.m. By the time he got to the PX the MPs were diverting traffic.
“We saw the fire trucks and ambulances and they were escorting everybody out of the building,” said Tarantino, a 31-year-old Puyallup resident.
Though most civilians are not allowed to use the PX, the gunman would have had access because he was a retired soldier.
The FBI took over jurisdiction of the case and will investigate with help from Fort Lewis law enforcement and the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command. The FBI is spearheading the case because both the victim and gunman were civilians, I Corps spokesman Maj. Mike Garcia said.
Concealed firearms are not allowed on Fort Lewis, Garcia said. Any firearm on post must be registered and, when in a car, unloaded with the ammunition stored separately.
“There is no reason to bring a loaded firearm onto this installation, nor is it authorized,” he said.
In addition to her running her kiosk at Fort Lewis, White sold fashion accessories and jewelry at McChord Air Force Base, Braggs said.
She opened a retail custom fashion store in Fife in November 2006 and closed it last year. The store, ZnZ Wear, was named for her two children, whose first names begin with the letter Z.
P.K. MacLean, executive director of the Fife Regional Chamber of Commerce, remembered White being “really enthusiastic” about her business.
“She was very passionate about it,” MacLean said.
A 2007 story in the Fife Free Press about White and her business noted she used her fashion talents to aid others. He helped with a Boys & Girls Clubs fashion show every year. She also assisted a family from Uganda by selling their handmade necklaces.
White said her goal was to have several stores as well be a manufacturer.
She said what inspired her most was her faith and her mother.
“I love my mom,” White said. “She’s my best friend. . . . Friends come and go but nobody’s like a mom.”
--Staff writer Adam Lynn contributed to this report.
--Scott Fontaine: 253-320-4758 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it blogs.thenewstribune.com/military
--Mike Archbold: 253-597-8692 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
2.
Local news
FORT LEWIS VENDOR FATALLY SHOT; ATTACKER KILLS SELF
By Sanjay Bhatt and Charles E. Brown
Seattle Times
July 23, 2009 (12:00 midnight)
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2009520686_fortlewis23m.html
FORT LEWIS, Pierce County -- A retired soldier walked into the crowded main post exchange at Fort Lewis late Wednesday morning and shot a civilian female worker to death before killing himself.
Dozens of terrified people inside the store were sent scattering at 11:20 a.m. when the 59-year-old man fired up to five gunshots, killing the civilian vendor as she stood at a kiosk before shooting himself in the head, according to an Army spokesman.
The woman was pronounced dead a short time later at Madigan Army Medical Center, and the man died just before 4:00 p.m., the Army said.
Their names were not released Wednesday, but I Corps spokesman Maj. Mike Garcia said the man was a Lakewood, Pierce County, resident who had retired from the Army as a sergeant first class in 1992. No other details were released about the woman, and officials did not disclose whether the two knew each other.
"People were running by me and screaming, 'There's a gunman. Run. Run. Call 911,'" said Kathy Johnson, of San Francisco, who was shopping in the post exchange when the gunfire erupted. "It was pandemonium -- like you see in a movie."
Johnson, 44, said she had been in the store less than five minutes when she heard four to six pops.
"At first I thought it was maybe firecrackers or something," said Johnson, who was born at Fort Lewis and was visiting the base with her mother, Kazui Miller, a military widow from Tacoma.
The FBI will lead the investigation into the shooting because both the victim and the gunman were civilians, Garcia said. The Army's Criminal Investigation Command and Fort Lewis law enforcement will assist in the investigation, according to the Army.
The investigation likely will focus on the relationship between the gunman and the victim and what prompted the shooting, the first at the post exchange since at least 2001, according to an Army spokesman.
The post exchange, commonly known as the PX, is a shopping hub at Fort Lewis that serves military personnel and their dependents. Typically, the exchange is crowded just before the noon hour, officials said.
The shooting occurred in a corridor area in the exchange, but not in the main store area, the Army said.
Military police arrived about five minutes after the shooting and secured the area, according to Army spokesman Joe Kubistek.
Virginia Chiene, of Seattle, told KING-TV she was having lunch with her daughter at the exchange when she heard the shots.
"We were so close to the action it was startling," Chiene said. "I never saw anything so terrible, it was just awful.
"Luckily, he didn't go berserk and start killing other people," Chiene's daughter, Diane Dezelan, told KING-TV.
Johnson said she took cover under a rack of shirts. A few steps away, another woman also had taken cover under another rack and frantically started dialing family members from her cellphone.
Johnson said she twice tried to call 911 from her own cellphone, but she got a busy signal. So she called her husband in San Francisco, who dialed 911 from there. The information was relayed to Fort Lewis military police.
Johnson believes she hid under the rack for 10 to 15 minutes. "We were pretty close to the front [of the PX] and didn't know what was going on," she said. "I could see the woman two racks away. We could see each other, and she was flipping out. I was yelling at her to shut up."
"Suddenly," Johnson said, "there was this creepy silence. You could hear only the music piped over the intercom."
Then a voice came over the intercom, calmly instructing everyone to exit to the back of the store.
"Believe me, I was out of that clothes rack in a millisecond," Johnson said.
Concealed firearms are not allowed on Fort Lewis, said Garcia, the Army spokesman. Visitors who use firearms at the base's recreational firing range must register them with the base provost marshal and keep the ammunition and firearm in separate containers at all times until they reach the firing range, he said.
"There is no reason to bring a loaded firearm onto this installation, nor is it authorized," Garcia said.
--Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
--Charles E. Brown: 206-464-2206 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
--Seattle Times staff reporters Hal Bernton and Lewis Kamb and news researcher Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
