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Police officers are gather in front of the Army's III Corps headquarters at Fort Hood, Texas, Friday.
(LM Otero / Associated Press)

Woman from Johnson City relates Ft. Hood crisis experiences

By James Brooks
Press Staff Writer
jbrooks@johnsoncitypress.com

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Heather Nunley works at a school within a mile of Thursday’s Fort Hood shooting and lives even closer.

Nunley and her husband, Sgt. Steven Nunley, are both from Johnson City. Sgt. Nunley is serving in Iraq.

“At this moment everything is normal,” she said Friday morning by phone from Texas. “Although it was strange for the children to come to school this morning and see armed guards and a tank posted outside.”

She said there are over seven schools within a mile of the shooting site, which was in the center of the post.

She put in for early release Thursday for a doctor’s appointment in a nearby town, and was returning to the post while the shooting was taking place. “As I went through the gate I noticed a helicopter in the air and two or three ambulances going off post, but didn’t think twice about it. When I got home the phone began ringing. I was told there was a mass shooting at the processing center and there were fatalities. I was told to refer calls to the rear detachment command,” Nunley said.

“My first thought was to go back to the school. Our kids were home and safe and my mother was visiting. But we have chronically ill children at the school, including some subject to seizure or diabetics in need of medication. The children were locked down in the school, but I was locked down in the house for an hour and-a-half before I could get back to the school. It remained locked down to 8 p.m. Teachers there did a great job. We got food ready from the cafeteria, and people cooked who never cooked at school before. That’s one thing you have to say about the military community — we are resilient.”

On Friday the lockdown at the post gate continued, but she said it created no personal problems.

“Everything I need is here and I don’t have to leave post,” she said.

She said little has been confirmed about the shooter, but there are lots of rumors. “At first people called (erroneously) about shootings in different locations, I guess because (the events of) 9-11 were in the forefront of people’s minds and everyone was prepared for something else to happen,” Nunley said.

This was one time when it was good news that family members were overseas. “Thank goodness all our unit is deployed and all of them back here on R&R were accounted for,” she said. “We have learned that the majority of the wounded are soldiers and no children involved. It was difficult getting phone calls and e-mails through yesterday. I was using Facebook instead.”