SAN ANTONIO, TX (AP) — A senior U.S. official says an airman shot his commander in an apparent murder-suicide at a U.S. Air Force base in San Antonio.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to publicly discuss Friday’s shooting at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland.
Brig. Gen. Robert LaBrutta, who oversees Joint Base San Antonio, says two handguns were found near the bodies of the men. LaBrutta stressed that the shooting was not an act of terrorism.
He declined to identify the two, saying their families must be notified first.
The base issued the following statement on its official Facebook page:
Two people were killed today at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland Medina Annex. There are no indications that this was a terrorist attack. Base first responders and local authorities have contained the incident and an investigation of the incident is underway. Names of the deceased are not being released pending notification of next of kin.
Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland is the home of Air Force basic training. The Army’s Fort Sam Houston and Lackland Air Force Base were combined during base realignment several years ago to become the military’s largest joint base.
The fatal shooting of two people at a U.S. Air Force base in San Antonio is the latest to occur at a military facility in Texas in the last several years.
In January 2015, an Army veteran and former clerk at the veterans’ clinic at Fort Bliss in El Paso shot and killed a psychologist, then committed suicide.
About a year earlier, three soldiers were killed and 16 wounded in an attack at Fort Hood near Killeen by Army Spc. Ivan A. Lopez, who also killed himself.
And in the deadliest attack to occur at a U.S. military installation, 13 people were killed and 31 were wounded in a mass shooting in 2009 at Fort Hood. Nidal Hasan, a former U.S. Army major, was convicted and sentenced to death in that shooting.The FBI is assisting in the investigation into the shooting.