Nidal Hasan

1988 William Fleming High school yearbook photo

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Posted: 12:43 p.m.| Updated: 4:21 p.m.

WASHINGTON — An Army psychiatrist with ties to the Roanoke Valley and Virginia Tech cleaned out his apartment and left a phone message saying goodbye to a friend in the days before the rampage that left 13 people dead, neighbors said Friday.

One neighbor, Patricia Villa, said Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, came over to her apartment Wednesday and Thursday and offered her some items, including a new Quran, saying he was going to be deployed on Friday.

Authorities said Hasan went on a shooting spree later at the sprawling Texas post. He was among 30 people wounded in the rampage and remained hospitalized Friday in a coma, attached to a ventilator. All but two of the injured were still hospitalized; all were in stable condition.

Hasan, the son of Roanoke merchants and restaurateurs, lived in Roanoke and Vinton. He graduated from William Fleming High School, Virginia Western Community College and Virginia Tech. He was born in Arlington to Palestinian immigrants from near Jerusalem who moved to Roanoke and later settled in Vinton.

Hasan was born in Arlington and attended Wakefield High School in 1986. Hasan’s family moved to Roanoke and settled in an apartment on Lancelot Lane off Cove Road in Northwest Roanoke, the 1987 Roanoke City Directory shows.

Hasan graduated from William Fleming High School in 1988, the only year he attended the school, according to Tiffany Woods, Roanoke City Schools spokeswoman. He attended Virginia Western Community College from 1990 to 1992. He graduated summa cum laude with an associate in science degree in 1992, according to college spokeswoman Margaret Boyes.

Virginia Tech confirmed that Hasan graduated from the university in 1995. According to a Virginia Tech news release, Hasan first enrolled at Virginia Tech for Summer Session II in 1992, and completed course work in Spring Semester 1995. He received a Bachelor of Science degree with honors in biochemistry from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He minored in biology and chemistry.

Prior to enrolling at Virginia Tech, Hasan also attended Barstow (Calif.) Community College.

Contrary to earlier reports, Tech said that Hasan was not a member of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets, nor was he a member of any ROTC program at Virginia Tech.

Hasan’s father, Malik Awadallah Hasan, immigrated from Palestine to Virginia in 1962, when he was 16, stories in The Roanoke Times’ archives show. He moved to Roanoke in 1985, with his wife, Hanan Ismail "Nora" Hasan, following in 1986. Neighbors on Ramada Road said they moved to the Vinton neighborhood in the early 1990s.

The Hasans ran the infamous Capitol Restaurant on the Roanoke City Market from 1987 to 1995. It was a dive beer hall and diner with a bad reputation and a lot of down-and-out regulars. The Hasans closed the Capitol to open the short-lived, Mediterranean-themed Mount Olive on Jefferson Street.

The Hasans also owned the Community Grocery Store on Elm Avenue in Roanoke.

It is unclear when Nidal Malik Hasan left the Roanoke Valley. Roanoke County General Registrar Judy Stokes said Hasan twice registered to vote in Roanoke County using his family’s address on Ramada Road in Vinton. He was purged from the voter rolls in 1993 because he hadn’t voted in the two previous federal elections. He registered again in 1996 but was purged again in 2003. Stokes was unable to provide any information about whether Hasan ever voted in the county.

Hasan was granted a concealed weapons permit in 1996, according to Roanoke County Circuit court records.

According to Hasan’s Army files, he went on to the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences’ F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine in Bethesda, Md., where he finished in 2003. He did his residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., through 2007. He was also a fellow at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the Bethesda military medical school, where he was a fellow in disaster and preventive psychiatry.

Investigators were trying to piece together how and why Hasan allegedly gunned down his comrades in one of the worst mass shootings ever on an American military base. Though his motive wasn’t known, some who knew Hasan said he may have been struggling with a pending deployment to Afghanistan and faced pressure in his work with distressed soldiers.

Hasan’s family said in a statement Friday that his alleged actions were "despicable and deplorable" and don’t reflect how the family was raised.

President Barack Obama ordered the flags at the White House and other federal buildings be at half-staff and urged people not to draw conclusions while authorities investigate.

"We don’t know all the answers yet. And I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts," Obama said in a statement.

An imam from a mosque Hasan regularly attended said Hasan, a lifelong Muslim, was a committed soldier, gave no sign of extremist beliefs and regularly wore his uniform at prayers.

Soldiers reported that the gunman shouted "Allahu Akbar!" — an Arabic phrase for "God is great!" — before opening fire, said Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the base commander. He said officials had not confirmed that Hasan made the comment.

The motive for the shooting wasn’t clear, but someone who used to work with Hasan said he had expressed some anger about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Neighbors described a man who appeared to be getting his affairs in order just hours before the shooting. Hasan was set to deploy to Afghanistan with an Army Reserve unit that provides what the military calls "behavioral health" counseling, Army spokeswoman Col. Cathy Abbott said.

Villa, who moved next door to Hasan about a month ago, said she had never spoken to him before he came over to her apartment.

She said Hasan gave her frozen broccoli, spinach, T-shirts and shelves on Wednesday, then returned Thursday morning and gave her his air mattress, several briefcases and a desk lamp. He then offered her $60 to clean his apartment Friday morning, after he was supposed to leave.

Another neighbor received a phone message from Hasan at 5 a.m. Thursday.

Jacqueline Harris, 44, said Hasan called her boyfriend, Willie Bell. "He just wanted to thank Willie for being a good friend and thank him for being there for him," Harris said. "That was it. We thought it was just a nice message to leave."

The manager of the apartment complex said Hasan recently was involved in a spat with another soldier living there over Hasan’s religious beliefs. A bumper sticker that read "Allah is Love" was ripped off Hasan’s car, which was keyed, said the manager, John Thompson.

Thompson said the neighbor had been in Iraq and was upset to learn that Hasan was Muslim.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Hasan’s aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, Va., said he had been harassed about being a Muslim in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and he wanted out of the Army.

"Some people can take it and some people cannot," she said. "He had listened to all of that and he wanted out of the military."

As some of the wounded began to recover, tales of heroic action during the shooting spree emerged.

The gunman was struck four times by a civilian police officer who was wounded herself. Base officials said Kimberly Munley fired on the suspect just three minutes after the gunfire erupted and that her efforts ended the crisis. Munley was recovering Friday at a hospital.

Cone said some 300 soldiers had been lined up to get vaccinations and have their eyes tested at a Soldier Readiness Center when the shots rang out. He said one soldier who had been shot told him, "I made the mistake of moving and I was shot again."

Soldiers who witnessed the shooting described the gunfire as continuous, methodical and well-aimed. The soldiers in the building were performing routine administrative tasks and were not armed, Col. John Rossi said during a news conference. When the shooting stopped, Hasan was carried out and laid on the ground in front of the center with some of the other severely wounded.

Medics pulled off his camouflage top and began to treat his wounds, said Sgt. Andrew Hagerman, a military police soldier at the scene. Hasan and three other badly injured soldiers were immediately flown by helicopter to Scott & White Hospital in nearby Temple, Tex.

Most of the wounded had been shot two or three times in the chest, stomach or neck, said Maj. Stephen Beckwith, a doctor at Darnall Army Medical Center, who like many others at the hospital said he had dealt with similar mass casualties while serving in Iraq.

Officials are not ruling out the possibility that some of the casualties may have been victims of "friendly fire," that in the confusion at the shooting scene some of the responding military officials may have shot some of the victims.

A doctor at a hospital where several of the wounded were taken says some patients may still die.

W. Roy Smythe is the chairman of surgery at Scott & White Memorial Hospital in Temple. He said Friday that "everyone is not out of the woods."

He says some of the wounded have "extremely serious injuries" and several patients are still at "significant risk" of losing their lives.

The dead included a man who quit a furniture company job to join the military about a year ago, a newlywed who had served in Iraq and a woman who had vowed to take on Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Friday was designated a day of mourning at Fort Hood. There also will be a ceremony at the air base to honor the dead.

Hasan reported for duty at Fort Hood in July, after working at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington for six years. Though he apparently had problems at Walter Reed, Fort Hood officials said they weren’t aware of any issues with his job performance.

One of Hasan’s bosses praised his work ethic and said he provided excellent care for his patients.

"Up to this point I would consider him an asset," said Col. Kimberly Kesling, deputy commander of clinical services at Darnall Army Medical Center.

But his record at Walter Reed wasn’t sterling. He received a poor performance evaluation, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly. And while he was an intern, Hasan had some "difficulties" that required counseling and extra supervision, said Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at the time.

U.S. Muslims reacted with both anger and fear of backlash after revelations that Hasan is a practicing Muslim. The nation’s major Muslim organizations and several mosques quickly condemned the attacks as contrary to Islam and highlighted the military service of U.S. Muslims, including those who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The community is in a state of agony," said Muqtedar Khan, director of the Islamic studies program at the University of Delaware and a well-known progressive Muslim intellectual.

Some U.S. mosques stepped up security on Friday, the main prayer day for Muslims.

At least six months ago, Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades.

Investigators had not determined for certain whether Hasan was the author of the posting, and a formal investigation had not been opened before the shooting, said law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the case.

FBI agents who searched Hasan’s apartment early Friday seized his computer, a law enforcement official said. It was not immediately known if they found anything suspicious on his computer files.

A classmate of the man accused of killing 13 people in Fort Hood says Maj. Nidal Hasan believed the war against terror was a "war against Islam."

Dr. Val Finnell was a classmate of Hasan’s at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. Both attended a master’s in public health program in 2007-2008.

Finnell says he got to know Hasan because the group of public health students took an environmental health class together. At the end of the class, everyone had to give a presentation. Classmates wrote on topics such as dry cleaning chemicals and mold in homes, but Finnell says Hasan’s topic was whether the war against terror was "a war against Islam."

Finnell says Hasan told classmates he was "a Muslim first and an American second."

Hasan may have been a participant in a Washington think tank's presidential transition task force formed in April 2008. George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI), a nonpartisan group that includes representatives from business, government, military and academic sectors, included a Nidal Hasan from the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine, according to the institute's roster of participants.