Four people are dead, including the shooter, after a shooting Friday morning at Naval Air Station Pensacola, authorities said. Several other people were injured, including two sheriff’s deputies who engaged the shooter.
The suspect was an aviation student from Saudi Arabia, officials confirmed at a press conference Friday. He was identified as Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, CBS News’ national security correspondent David Martin reports.
Base commander Captain Tim Kinsella explained that the base has a longstanding program to train military students from ally nations.
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“There’s always been international students training here,” Kinsella told reporters. “He was in the aviation pipeline … training in aviation.”
Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said at a press conference earlier Friday that “the threat has been negated.” He said authorities were not looking for any additional shooters.
“While we would love to do a full disclosure of what occurred this morning about everything that we are aware of, quite obviously we cannot do that. There are things – we are now in the investigative process – that are required to be held back,” Morgan said.
“Walking through the crime scene was like being on the set of a movie,” he said.
“You just don’t expect this to happen at home. This doesn’t happen in Escambia County, this doesn’t happen in Pensacola, this doesn’t happen to our friends and neighbors in the United States Navy. But it did.”
The shooting took place in Building 633, which is part of the Naval Aviation Schools Command and is where Navy personnel entering flight training first report, CBS News’ David Martin reported. As of mid-Friday morning, the building was on lockdown.
Officials confirmed the shooting was contained within two floors in one building.
The base said it will be closed for the remainder of Friday and that only “essential personnel” will be allowed to enter.
The FBI is taking over the investigation.
Naval Air Station Pensacola is a United States Navy base located next to Warrington, Florida. The base employs more than 16,000 military and 7,400 civilian personnel. It is also home to the Blue Angels flight demonstration team and the National Naval Aviation Museum.
This is the second shooting to occur on a U.S. Navy base this week. On Wednesday, a sailor opened fire at a U.S. Navy shipyard at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, killing two civilian shipyard employees and wounding another before dying from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to a Navy spokesman.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
