Tag Archives: Pensacola

Pressure mounts on FBI for answers on Florida naval base shooting

By Brad Brooks

PENSACOLA, Fla. (Reuters) – U.S. investigators face mounting pressure on Monday to deliver answers on the motive that led a Saudi Air Force lieutenant to shoot and kill three people and wounded eight others at a U.S. Navy base in Pensacola, Florida.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, speaking at a Sunday evening press conference, said he was sure the gunman carried out an act of terrorism. He questioned whether it could have been prevented by better vetting of foreign military officers who train in the United States.

“There is a lot of frustration in our state over this,” DeSantis said. “You have foreign military personnel coming to our base. They should not be doing that if they hate our country.”

The FBI said it thinks that the shooter, Second Lieutenant Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, 21, acted alone when he opened fire inside a classroom at the base early on Friday morning.

The bureau said it was not ruling out labeling the violence as an act of terrorism, but that it still had many people to interview on Monday and was still collecting evidence at what it called an active crime scene.

The New York Times reported late Sunday that it had reviewed an official complaint Alshamrani lodged in April against an instructor at the base who had made derogatory comments about his appearance, but that there was no apparent connection between that incident and the shooting.

The FBI confirmed on Sunday that Alshamrani had legally purchased somewhere in Florida the Glock 9mm pistol he used in the shooting. DeSantis said he was able to buy the firearm because of a “federal loophole” in gun laws that allow nonimmigrant foreign nationals to purchase weapons for an array of reasons, including if they simply have a hunting license.

“I’m big supporter of the Second Amendment, but it’s so Americans can keep and bear arms, not Saudi Arabians,” the governor told reporters.

Alshamrani was on the base as part of a U.S. Navy training program designed to foster links with foreign allies. He had started training in the United States in 2017 and had been in the Pensacola area for the past 18 months, authorities said.

His fellow Saudi students were speaking directly with American investigators and were restricted to the base on order of the Saudi military, Rojas said.

(Reporting by Brad Brooks)

Three killed including shooter at U.S. Navy base in Pensacola, Florida

Three killed including shooter at U.S. Navy base in Pensacola, Florida
(Reuters) – Three people including a suspected shooter were killed and at least seven others were injured on Friday at Naval Air Station Pensacola, a major U.S. Navy base in Florida, authorities said, the second deadly shooting at a U.S. military installation this week.

An “active shooter” was encountered on the base on Friday morning, according to the Escambia County sheriff’s office.

A few minutes later, the shooter was dead, according to the sheriff’s office and the Navy. WEAR TV, a local news channel, reported that sheriff’s deputies at the base fatally shot the shooter.

Two other people were killed, the Navy said in a statement, without providing further details. Authorities planned a news conference for later on Friday morning.

The base remained on lockdown.

At least six injured people were expected at the trauma center of the Ascension Sacred Heart Hospital Pensacola, spokesman Mike Burke said.

Seven people were being treated at Baptist Hospital, WEAR TV reported.

U.S. President Donald Trump had been briefed and was monitoring the situation, a White House spokesman said.

On Wednesday, a sailor shot three civilians at the historic Pearl Harbor military base in Hawaii, killing two of them before taking his own life.

The Pensacola base, which is near Florida’s border with Alabama, is a major training site for the Navy and home to its aerobatic flight demonstration squadron, the Blue Angels. The base employs more than about 16,000 military and 7,400 civilian personnel, according to the base’s website.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen and Maria Caspani in New York; Editing by Alison Williams and Steve Orlofsky)

Supreme Court throws out ruling that blocked Florida cross on public land

Pensacola, Florida Cross on public land

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday threw out a lower court ruling that declared that a 34-foot (10 meters) Christian cross standing on public land in Pensacola, Florida violated the U.S. Constitution’s ban on government endorsement of religion.

The justices sent the case back to the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in light of the high court’s June 20 ruling in a similar case in which it upheld the constitutionality of a 40-foot-tall (12 meters) cross-shaped war memorial on public land in Maryland.

The high court’s 7-2 ruling said that long-standing monument was permissible under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which calls for the separation of church and state. The justices were divided over whether other types of religious displays and symbols on government property would be allowed.

A cross in Pensacola has stood on the site in Bayview Park since 1941, although the most recent version was erected in 1969. At times the site has been used for Easter services.

In a September 2018 ruling, the Atlanta-based court said the Pensacola law was unconstitutional, citing its own precedents on the issue.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)