Patricia Villa, a neighbor of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan at the Casa Del Norte apartments in Killeen, stands Friday next to some clothing that Hasan gave her in the days leading up to Thursday's shooting. (Duane A. Laverty photo)
Posted on 11/07/2009 5:10:40 AM PST by LA Woman3
Patricia Villa was grateful to have such a kind and generous neighbor at her new apartment in an area some residents call “the ghetto of Killeen.”
Now her neighbor, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, lies in a hospital with multiple gunshot wounds, the suspected gunman who killed at least 13 military personnel and wounded dozens of others Thursday at Fort Hood.
Authorities on Friday seized Hasan’s home computer, searched his apartment and took away a large metal trash bin as the Army major lay in a coma in the hospital, attached to a ventilator.
Villa, 47, and her husband moved to the Casa Del Norte complex a month ago. Hasan had been there since July. The two dozen units face each other across a courtyard where residents often gathered for cookouts and just to sit and talk.
Villa and her husband often sat out on a porch they shared with Hasan’s apartment, and the 39-year-old psychiatrist who came to Fort Hood from Walter Reed Army Medical Center seemed nice.
On Tuesday night, she said, Hasan approached them on the porch and offered her a Spanish-language Quran. When she told him she didn’t read Spanish, he pledged to return with another Quran for her.
Before 9:30 the next morning, he knocked on her door, offering the Islamic holy book and three bags of frozen food. When he saw the couple has little furniture, she said, he gave them some shelves and folding chairs and some clothing for her husband.
He wanted to know whether they had a bed. No, she told him — they could barely afford to pay the rent on the place.
“I barely had anything, so of course I said, ‘OK,’ ” said Villa, who moved to Killeen to be near her daughter. “I thought, ‘Wow. Thank God.’ ”
He told her he was being deployed Friday and that he “was ready,” Villa said, and asked her if he could pay her to clean his apartment after he left. After he turned down her offers to do it for free, they agreed on $60 for the job. Military officials said Hasan was to be deployed to Afghanistan, where he was to counsel soldiers suffering from stress.
Villa accompanied Hasan to his apartment to size up the task, she said, and all she saw in the unit were a kitchen table and some dish soap. He told her he’d bring her a key Friday morning so she could clean.
On Thursday morning, he brought Villa an air mattress and other items he said he no longer needed. Wanting to do something in return, she wrapped up a couple of the sweet tamales she’d been making and knocked on her neighbor’s door. He thanked her and accepted the tamales after she assured him they contained no meat.
It was the last time she saw him. She heard a blast of sirens at about 1:30 Thursday afternoon, the sound of emergency crews responding to the mass shooting.
“When I heard the sirens and I heard there had been a shooting, I had a feeling it was him who had been shot,” she said. “And now . . . I cannot believe he did this.”
Others at the complex were also taken aback that the quiet but friendly Hasan might have unleashed such violence. He kept to himself, they said, and neighbors were used to seeing him in all sorts of garb: his fatigues, jeans, T-shirts and sometimes white robes.
Alice Thompson, who manages the apartments with her husband, John, said Hasan paid six months’ rent upfront at the complex, which charges $325 to $350 a month for the units.
“He could have made bombs and put them on the roof of this place and blown us all up,” she said. “But instead, he shot up his own soldiers. I just don’t know why.”
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.”
Hasan recently was involved in a spat with another Fort Hood soldier residing in his apartment complex, apparently related to his Muslim beliefs.
John Thompson said the other soldier, John Van de Walker, allegedly keyed Hasan’s car and also removed and tore up a bumper sticker that said “Allah is Love.” Thompson said Van de Walker had been in Iraq and was upset to learn that Hasan was Muslim.
“That’s why he did it,” Thompson said.
A report filed with Killeen police Aug. 16 indicates that Hasan’s vehicle, a 2006 Honda Civic, had been scratched by an unknown object causing an estimated $1,000 worth of damage. The report indicates that Van de Walker, 30, was arrested Oct. 21 and charged with criminal mischief. The matter has been referred for prosecution, according to the report.
Another neighbor, 42-year-old Kim Rosenthal, said Hasan didn’t seem too upset that his vehicle was scratched.
“He said it was Ramadan and that he had to forgive people,” Rosenthal said. “He forgave him and moved on.”
Hasan’s mind-set about his mission overseas wasn’t clear. Someone who used to work with Hasan said he had expressed some anger about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but neighbors said he appeared fine with his pending deployment.
“I asked him how he felt about going over there, with their religion and everything, and he said, ‘It’s going to be interesting,’ ” said Edgar Booker, a retired soldier who works in a cafeteria on the post.
While Hasan mostly got on well with his neighbors, the Thompsons said they never saw him receive visitors until Wednesday night, when he arrived home with a man who entered his apartment and left after about five minutes, they said.
“This is just unbelievable,” John Thompson said. “That someone who lives 30 feet from you would do this.”
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.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
I’m sure Mohammed Atta’s neighbors thought he was a nice quiet man.
I could be mistaken, but did not people who knew the 9/11 terrorist who murdered about 3,000 people have their neighbors say the same sort of things about them? Is not rule number one for terrorists not to draw attention to yourself before you engage in your act of terrorism?
It seems like in every shooting, everyone says the same thing about the nice, quiet neighbor.
Ft. Hood ping...
and the “good” son!
I’ve seen photos of Adolf Hitler petting his dog.
It seems that criminals are usually described by their neighbors as being nice and quiet. Maybe we should arrest all nice quiet folks. Must be up to something.
Norman Bates seemed like a nice,quiet man.......
“It seems like in every shooting, everyone says the same thing about the nice, quiet neighbor.”
Almost makes you think the reporters are searching for that exact response.
...Just to be on the safe side,I’m turning mean and loud!
He never killed a bunch of people before so he is clearly a nice guy all around and forever.
Especially when calling for muslims to rise up against the oppressor and shooting over 40 innocent people.
In that particular case, I’ve run across one account of someone who dealt with Atta who described him as unpleasant and creepy.
Makes me wonder why he chose such cheap digs to live in - I assume when he moved there in July he didn’t yet know he would be deployed. So was he already thinking that it wouldn’t matter where he lived, since he was planning Jihad?
Yeah, they are always nice and quiet.
“Neighbors knew alleged Fort Hood shooter as a nice, but quiet, man”
...same thing was said about Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, that muslim sniper in DC a few years ago...Makes you wish your neighbore were a##holes.
That's why no muslim, no matter how "nice and quiet" he is, can be trusted.
The neighbors remind me of the electorate who look on a man but do not hear what he says and see who he is, America has become a nation of fools and all those who voted for democrats and rinos are proof of the fact that stupid is as stupid does.
I’m anxious to find out what is on his computer. I wonder is he ditched his cell phone before the attack?
Yes, the neighbor liked him because he gave her free stuff!
I see a lot of similarities between muslims and pit bulls.
Such a nice, saintly man. I was more interested in the Trib articles that reported on area outreach to the Ft. Hood community and on the PA from Cameron who was the civilian death.
You beat me to it and you are so right. The perpetrator is always nice, quiet, keeps to himself and is seldom seen outside engaging in friendly conversation.
Yes, I did. You go girl! We need to look her up.
It is all part of the Muslim mindset. First they identify their neighbors, associates, people around them; then they are to show an act of charitable kindness, a self induced grace including forgiveness; then they are to introduce the Quran as a sacred book to those who are not believers in the Quran, i.e. “infidels’; then if the Quran is not accepted and practiced and believed they have a duty by the Quran to slaughter those to whom they have been graceful.
So if you are approached by a Muslim bearing free gifts, be cautious of their next series of planned encounters.
It might be noted how each state of mind presented in Islam counterfeits the Word of God as provided through faith in Christ, then perverts it with arrogance, denying the justice satisfied with God the Father by the Cross.
Instead it attempts to perform something good as a substitute for Christ’s death on the Cross, for them to satisfy God’s judgment.
Accordingly, when they act independently of faith through Christ, they are thinking in a soulish fashion, whereas in Christianity, the believer through faith in Christ places control with God and His grace.
When the Muslim provides a gift, he correctly identifies it as good, but misidentifies his human good independent of what God provides, with God’s grace. Accordingly the human good performed is only rewardable between the man and another man by God’s Plan, but the Muslim confuses the good work as being of divine merit.
This subtle substitution of thinking a good work is now of divine quality, sets the trap in the Muslim mind, now able to identify righteousness and judgement, but substitutes what is right in his own mind, as opposed to God’s righteousness.
Then whenever that righteousness encounters unrighteousness, it demands justice.
This righteousness/justice interaction is also presented in the Word of God when we look at the Arc of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies, where one cherub representing God’s perfect righteousness is facing another cherub representing God’s perfect justice, both comprising His perfect Holiness.
The difference lays in the 2 cherub on the Arc of the Covenant resting on the Mercy Seat, identified with Christ Jesus, where the blood from the sacrifice was placed to provide atonement for sin and propitiation of God’s wrath, thereby reconciling man to God.
Islam fails to recognize the sacrifice made available by God as a perfect sacrifice and attempts to substitute man provided sacrifices with belief in God’s existence, but not through faith in what God provides.
In a sense, the Islamic series of sacrifices offered in those good works, and then judgment and attempts to murder their perceived infidels, become an attempt to make God a debtor for their perceived faithfulness to Him.
The significant problem is that like in the case of Abraham and Issac, God recognizes their faith for righteousness, but the object of that faith must be in Him and then He provides for us. The sacrifice was provided by God, when he stayed the hand of Abraham over Issac, as a type of Christ, who also would be provided for all mankind as the Perfect Sacrifice for sin.
The Islamic mindset condemns itself into arrogance by first rejecting what God provides, then substituting human good for divine good in a thirst for grace, then counterfeits human arrogant judgment of those who do not accept the Muslim selfish system of works as being divinely perfect, and terminates in a death spiral of arrogance, humanly judging others as infidels and demanding their violent death, frequently with their own, continuing in their arrogance to demand acceptance by others to the utmost of their volition.
I’m hearing more on the news about how other muzzies are “fearful” than I am about potential threats to our country.
<Makes me wonder why he chose such cheap digs to live in
Yeah, I wonder too. Why would a doctor in the military have to live in such a low-rent place? You can live where you want, but it sure seems weird. Most officers and most doctors wouldn’t want to live in such a place.
Ted Bundy was, by most accounts, a pleasant, amiable sort.
Hasan has only resided in that hole since July...that’s 4 months....Sounds like he was already into a “plan” by moving to this area. No one would pay attention to him there.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.