Fort Hood killings evoke bad memory

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By Steve Miller THE WASHINGTON TIMES

KILLEEN, Texas | The town that has for years been newsworthy for its violence is again in crisis.

Thursday's massacre of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, the nation's largest active-duty military installation, has brought crisis clinics, candlelight vigils and questions on the ability of the military to police its own.

For decades, Killeen, the de facto civilian arm of the U.S. Army base, has been subject to the vacillating and fickle arm of military budget cuts and call-ups.

It is watching a replay of the spotlight shone on it in 1991, when a man entered a cafeteria and fatally shot 22 diners.

"Eighteen years ago, we had the largest mass murder in U.S. history," lamented Corbett Lawler, who was principal of Killeen High School in 1991, when George Hennard rammed his pickup truck through the front of a Luby's Cafeteria and began shooting.

"Now, we have one of the largest military mass murders in the U.S."

On Saturday, knit-capped kids rode their bikes, and shoppers at the Killeen Mall sat in stalled traffic, all under a glowing autumn sun, giving the effect that nothing earth-shaking really happened just 48 hours earlier.

"But people will suffer the effects of what happened at Hood for years," said Mr. Lawler, whose school district lost four employees in the Luby's killings. "I know people who worked with me who were never the same."

Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Saturday hinted as much to reporters outside Scott & White Memorial Hospital in nearby Temple, Texas, where 10 of the 30-plus injured in Thursday's shootings are recovering.

"It's been almost two days now since this tragic event occurred, and I don't think anything has happened to dull any of our feelings emotionally about the incident," Mr. Perry said.