As details begin to fill in I wanted to pass some information along. It seems that Aaron Alexis had questionable firearms uses twice in the last ten years. I think it is important to sift through the opinion and look at the facts.
In 2010 he shot through his ceiling and blamed it on an accidental discharge.
The Star-Telegram reports:
Firearms charge in 2010
But a police report filed in September 2010 painted a different picture of Alexis.
Records show that he was arrested for discharging a firearm within a municipality.
Police were dispatched to the Oak Hills apartments about 6:40 p.m. Sept 4, 2010, on a report that someone had fired a shot through the floor and into the ceiling of a woman’s apartment, according to a Fort Worth police report.
The woman told police she had been sitting in a chair when she heard a loud pop and saw dust.
“She then saw that there was a hole in her floor just a couple of feet from where she was sitting while shredding papers and a hole in the ceiling,” the report states. “She told me that she believed someone had shot a bullet through her apartment.”
The woman told police that Alexis, her downstairs neighbor, did not come up to check on her after the shooting.
She said that Alexis had called police on her several times in the past for “being loud” but that police never heard anything and therefore, no action was taken.
“She said that several days ago Aaron confronted her in the parking lot about making too much noise,” the report states.
The woman told police that she was “terrified” of Alexis and felt the shooting was done intentionally.
The report states police attempted to contact Alexis at his apartment but received no response.
Fearing someone could be hurt, police had called the Fire Department to the scene to attempt to force entry into the man’s apartment. When firefighters arrived on the scene, however, Alexis came outside voluntarily and told officers he had been cleaning his gun when it went off.
“He said that he was trying to clean his gun while cooking and that his hands were slippery. He told me that he began to take the gun apart when his hands slipped and pulled the trigger, discharging a round into the ceiling,” the report states.
“When asked why he didn’t call police or go check on the resident above him, Aaron said that he didn’t think it went all the way through since he couldn’t see any light through the hole,” the report states.
Alexis told police he thought people would dismiss the noise as a firecracker.
“I then asked why he wouldn’t answer the door when I knocked and he said that he thought it was just his upstairs neighbor and he didn’t want to talk to her because she is always making noise,” the report states.
Police arrested Alexis at the scene on suspicion of discharging a firearm in a municipality, a Class A misdemeanor. He was released from jail the next day, Tarrant County records show, and was never formally charged in the case.
“After reviewing the facts presented by the police department, it was determined that the elements constituting recklessness under Texas law were not present and a case was not filed,” said Melody McDonald, a spokeswoman with the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office.
The Orion at Oak Hill apartments in Fort Worth began eviction efforts against Alexis later in September 2010. Records show that he moved from the Oak Hill apartments in December 2010.
If you would like to look at the 2010 police report it can be found here.
This information came out early in the day but within the last hour I have also learned that in 2004 Alexis was involved in another incident in which he shot out someone’s tires. He was living in Seattle at the time.
Seattle.gov reports:
Aaron Alexis, the man identified by Washington D.C. police as a suspect in this morning’s tragic attack on a US Navy Yard, was previously arrested by Seattle police in 2004 for shooting out the tires of another man’s vehicle in what Alexis later described to detectives as an anger-fueled “blackout.”
Because Seattle police have received numerous inquiries about the incident, we are posting the details, detective logs, and the original report for the May 6, 2004 case.
At about 8 am that morning, two construction workers had parked their 1986 Honda Accord in the driveway of their worksite, next to a home where Alexis was staying in the Beacon Hill neighborhood.
The victims reported seeing a man, later identified by police as Alexis, walk out of the home next to their worksite, pull a gun from his waistband and fire three shots into the two rear tires of their Honda before he walked slowly back to his home north of the construction site.
Officers responded to the scene but were unable to locate Alexis, and no one answered the door at his home.
When detectives interviewed workers and a manager at the construction site, they told police Alexis had “stared” at construction workers at the job site every day over the last month prior to the shooting. The owner of the construction business told police he believed Alexis was angry over the parking situation around the work site.
Detective notes from the incident indicate they made several attempts to contact Alexis by phone and at his work, but eventually found and arrested him outside of his home on June 3rd.
Police then obtained permission to search the home, found a gun and ammunition in Alexis’ room, and booked him into the King County Jail for malicious mischief.
Following his arrest, Alexis told detectives he perceived he had been “mocked” by construction workers the morning of the incident and said they had “disrespected him.” Alexis also claimed he had an anger-fueled “blackout,” and could not remember firing his gun at the victims’ vehicle until an hour after the incident.
Once is a coincidence. Twice is a pattern. Focus on the facts. This man was not the peace-loving Buddhist that some reports are painting him as. It is reported that he served in the Navy from 2007 to 2011. I would think it is highly likely that a man with his apparent anger problem may have found today was time for him to get a little payback. In fact, Pentagon Reporter Julian Barnes of Wall Street Journal is reporting that he was kicked out of the Navy tied to a 2010 shooting incident (quite possibly the incident in Texas).
Update: Beyond belief is all I can say but it would appear this psychopath had a Concealed Carry Weapons Permit. ABC News reports:
Nutpisit Suthamtewakul, owner of Happy Bowl Thai in White Settlement, Texas, said was a “good and close friend” of Alexis. He said the two lived together for three or four years.
“I don’t believe he did that,” Suthamtewakul told ABC News. “He can be tough physically, but I don’t think he’d kill people.”
Suthamtewakul said Alexis liked to play games, drink and party. Alexis spoke Thai fluently, he said, traveled a lot for work and had been living in Washington for four or five months.
“He’s not aggressive,” he said. “He had a gun but that doesn’t mean he’s gonna shoot people. He had a concealed-weapons permit.”
How could a guy that had let his anger issues get the best of him twice be allowed to have a CCW? There was a breakdown in the system somewhere. That’s a certainty.
