The dead shooter was Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan, was a mental health professional.

Two persons held on questioning were released, but now they have picked-up another person for questioning.

Both his name and his area of expertise I'm sure will be dissected and studied in great detail.

Theory: Malik for some reason loses it, begins planning massacre, manipulates patients into aiding him?

Seriously, it is not at all too uncommon for psychologists/psychiatrists to manipulate patients to helping them with a crime.

I am hearing the two that were detained have been released. They either were coworkers or two guys that were there that for some reason Maj. Hasan failed to target.

I am sure we will find out soon enough.

It's quite hard to put general standards on who's stable or not. Years of service? Rank? IIRC a shooting also happened in NASA or JPL, perpetrated by someone with a PhD degree... IMO anyone can snap.

How the heck does one guy get off enough rounds to kill 11 (plus the poor cop) and wound 31 in that environment?

That's what I found myself asking as well, isn't Fort Knox one of the largest military bases in the world? How the bloody hell is a lone person able to kill a total of 12 people, and injure 31 others, before being taken down himself? It's just mindboggling to me, this is supposed to be a military base afterall..

I think we'll have to wait further for this thing to be cleared up.

It has been a long time since I outprocessed Fort Hood (back in 1990) but if it was like the processing center at Fort Lewis it is essentially a gymnasium converted into a large processing center where people go through stations that cover things like their wills, their shots, ensuring that all their equipment is taken care of, that family care plans are put together, etc.

Someone coming through the front door could open fire and probably could shoot quite a few people in the confusion, especially if he knows where the exits are and knows how the traffic will flow. I suspect he had been there several times in his role as psychiatrist since there is a psychological eval section as part of the demobilization process for soldiers returning from deployment.

During the busiest part of the day I remember seeing over 500-750 troopers in the processing center at Ft. Lewis. I suspect the one at Fort Hood was even larger since there is a huge combat arms presence there.