A NASA contractor took two co-workers hostage at Johnson Space Center, killing one of them before turning the revolver on himself, officials said, just days after the bloodiest school shooting in US history.
Bill Phillips, an engineer with Jacobs Engineering who had worked for NASA for about 12 years, barricaded himself inside the building on Friday, after managing to sneak a gun past security at the sprawling space center campus, police and NASA officials said.
Phillips shot David Beverly in the chest, killing the NASA employee, and later shot himself in the head inside Building 44, a communications and engineering facility, officials said.
The second hostage, Fran Crenshaw, another NASA contract worker, was found duct-taped to a chair a few hours after the standoff began. She was treated at a hospital and released.
Police had tried to negotiate with the man but all they heard from the room was another gunshot. When they rushed in the room they found the two men dead and the woman bound at her hands and ankles.
On a chalkboard in the room where his body was found, Phillips left a list of names and phone numbers and a scribbled note, which was not immediately understandable, the Houston Chronicle reported yesterday.
Friday's shooting happened while the nation was mourning the 32 people shot dead by a South Korean student who killed himself after his rampage at Virginia Tech University on Monday.
All three were electrical engineers in their early 50s who knew each other, and they may even had had lunch together earlier in the day, Johnson Space Center director Michael Coates told a news conference.
Officials did not know the motive behind the killing.
"Apparently there was some type of dispute between" Phillips and Beverly, Houston Police Chief Howard Hurtt told reporters.
Phillips lived alone, was not married and had no children, officials said.
"Up until recently he has been a good employee," Coates said.
Coates said NASA had reviewed its security procedures, which were beefed up after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the wake of Monday's massacre at Virginia Tech University but decided they did not need further tightening.
"We never believed this could happen to our family here," he said.
Visitors and employees need badges to get into the space center, which is home to the space shuttle's mission control, and cars are randomly checked for bombs. Guns are not allowed in the complex.
"We have a standard set of security rules that do include random vehicle searches," NASA spokeswoman Eileen Hawley said at an earlier press conference.
"Certainly, I would believe that our security and our senior leadership is going to take a very close look at this incident, and see if there was anything that we should have done or could have done differently," she said.
NASA officials said mission operations were not interrupted by the incident. NASA chief Michael Griffin headed to the center after the shooting, the space agency said.
US President George W. Bush was kept informed throughout the standoff, the White House said.
"The president was deeply saddened to hear about the loss of life and he will pray for the family members and co-workers, who surely must be shocked and grieving," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion