For now, there are no obvious or underlying reasons behind the Navy Yard shooting that took place in Washington, D.C. on September 16, 2013. You can’t grill the shooter with questions because before he shot and killed 13 people (and injured many others), he was taken down in the melee. What would make someone go ‘off the deep end’ and participate in a shooting spree? That’s the question that many are asking, and for some, they believe there could be a more hidden, sinister truth.
34-year-old Aaron Alexis has been identified as the gunman of the shooting rampage that took place at the Washington Navy Yard. The Fort Worth Police Department released a booking photo of Alexis, which revealed that he was at one time arrested on suspicion of discharging a firearm in the city limits. Before the shooting, the man was an IT subcontractor for the Navy working for Hewlett-Packard.
It is also confirmed that the shooter also had a history with the military – serving as a full-time reservist in 2007. He was discharged in 2011 after achieving the rank of mate third class. During his time with the Navy, he had earned the National Defense Service Medal, as well as the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal.
Armed with an assault rifle and handgun, Alexis went on a rampage at the Navy Yard, and is the only person responsible for opening fire at 8:20 a.m. – using a shotgun purchased at a gun store located in Lorton, Virginia. The FBI believes that there is no evidence of terrorism associated with the tragedy.
As residents of D.C. and investigators try to make sense of the shooting, the race to understand the reasoning behind the Alexis’ motives has become a hot topic. ABC News reported that the gunman had become increasingly agitated over a ‘perceived slight’ that grew over the course of a year. He reportedly had a habit of staying up all night long playing military-style video games. Friends admit that he had also been recently asking for financial help. Others have given information to suggest that Alexis was a very angry man.
The FBI are working on learning all they can about the shooter’s past, and will look into leads centered on previous brushes with the law, mounting frustration regarding his pay as a consultant during a contracting trip to Japan, as well as his hardships with locating full-time employment. His troubles seem to have started in 2010 as a Naval reservist, and most recently, he was suspected of ruining a car belonging to a couple who had allowed him to live with them.
Before the Navy Yard shooting, Alexis had already been arrested on two different occasions. In May of 2004, he was arrested in Seattle for shooting out the tires of another man’s car that he referred to as “an anger-fueled ‘blackout’.” He told officers that he did not remember firing his gun until an hour after the incident had occurred. On Sept. 4, 2010, Fort Worth police arrested him for recklessly discharging a firearm inside the limits of a municipality.
Alexis also has a connection to the September 11th attacks, as he was an active participant in rescue attempts, and may have suffered from PTSD that was likely related to those experiences. His father believes the event had a profound effect on his son’s anger management issues. Alexis is also known to have spoken about how angry he would get that “terrorists would take innocent lives.”
Despite displaying anger issues in the past, some skeptics feel that it isn’t a far-fetched notion that MK-Ultra programming could have played a role in the actions of Alexis. Could his anger-fueled ‘blackout’ experienced in the past have been the result of undergoing mind control or programming? Is that a reason why he may not have remembered what he had done in the past? It is not an impossible concept to digest that people with certain personalities or mental health issues can be used as a pawn. It’s easy to overlook underlying motives when someone with a violent or troubled past is involved, as they certainly make the best scapegoats.