A California man who was fatally shot after opening fire on security officers outside the Pentagon appears to have been acting alone, with no links to domestic or international terrorism, police said yesterday.
The gunman, identified by authorities as 36-year-old John Patrick Bedell, was apparently trying to gain entry to the Pentagon when he approached a security checkpoint and started shooting, police said.
He was shot in the head on Thursday evening near the main entrance to the building in a shootout with three security officers, two of whom received “superficial” bullet wounds and were treated and released from a local hospital, Pentagon police chief Richard Keevill told reporters.
“There is no indication at this point that there [is] any domestic or international terrorism nexus to this at all,” Keevill said.
Keevill said authorities do not know Bedell’s motives in the shooting, which occurred at the Pentagon entrance near a busy commuter rail station. But Keevill said authorities are looking into a series of Internet postings by a user identified as “JPatrickBedell” for clues.
These postings make reference to US marijuana laws and marijuana-related felony charges in 2006 in California against John Patrick Bedell.
They also refer to the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the case of Marine Colonel James Sabow, who died in 1991.
The user wrote the Sabow case was “a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions.”
Sabow was found dead in the backyard of his California home. His death was ruled a suicide but the case has long been the source of theories of a cover-up.
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