Fort Lewis vendor fatally shot; attacker kills self

FORT LEWIS, Pierce County — A retired soldier walked into the crowded main post exchange at Fort Lewis late Wednesday morning and shot a civilian female worker to death before killing himself.

Dozens of terrified people inside the store were sent scattering at 11:20 a.m. when the 59-year-old man fired up to five gunshots, killing the civilian vendor as she stood at a kiosk before shooting himself in the head, according to an Army spokesman.

The woman was pronounced dead a short time later at Madigan Army Medical Center, and the man died just before 4 p.m., the Army said.

Their names were not released Wednesday, but I Corps spokesman Maj. Mike Garcia said the man was a Lakewood, Pierce County, resident who had retired from the Army as a sergeant first class in 1992. No other details were released about the woman, and officials did not disclose whether the two knew each other.

"People were running by me and screaming, 'There's a gunman. Run. Run. Call 911,' " said Kathy Johnson, of San Francisco, who was shopping in the post exchange when the gunfire erupted. "It was pandemonium — like you see in a movie."

Johnson, 44, said she had been in the store less than five minutes when she heard four to six pops.

"At first I thought it was maybe firecrackers or something," said Johnson, who was born at Fort Lewis and was visiting the base with her mother, Kazui Miller, a military widow from Tacoma.

The FBI will lead the investigation into the shooting because both the victim and the gunman were civilians, Garcia said. The Army's Criminal Investigation Command and Fort Lewis law enforcement will assist in the investigation, according to the Army.

The investigation likely will focus on the relationship between the gunman and the victim and what prompted the shooting, the first at the post exchange since at least 2001, according to an Army spokesman.

The post exchange, commonly known as the PX, is a shopping hub at Fort Lewis that serves military personnel and their dependents. Typically, the exchange is crowded just before the noon hour, officials said.

The shooting occurred in a corridor area in the exchange, but not in the main store area, the Army said.

Military police arrived about five minutes after the shooting and secured the area, according to Army spokesman Joe Kubistek.

Virginia Chiene, of Seattle, told KING-TV she was having lunch with her daughter at the exchange when she heard the shots.

"We were so close to the action it was startling," Chiene said. "I never saw anything so terrible, it was just awful.

"Luckily, he didn't go berserk and start killing other people," Chiene's daughter, Diane Dezelan, told KING-TV.

Johnson said she took cover under a rack of shirts. A few steps away, another woman also had taken cover under another rack and frantically started dialing family members from her cellphone.

Johnson said she twice tried to call 911 from her own cellphone, but she got a busy signal. So she called her husband in San Francisco, who dialed 911 from there. The information was relayed to Fort Lewis military police.

Johnson believes she hid under the rack for 10 to 15 minutes. "We were pretty close to the front [of the PX] and didn't know what was going on," she said. "I could see the woman two racks away. We could see each other, and she was flipping out. I was yelling at her to shut up."

"Suddenly," Johnson said, "there was this creepy silence. You could hear only the music piped over the intercom."

Then a voice came over the intercom, calmly instructing everyone to exit to the back of the store.

"Believe me, I was out of that clothes rack in a mili-second," Johnson said.

Concealed firearms are not allowed on Fort Lewis, said Garcia, the Army spokesman. Visitors who use firearms at the base's recreational firing range must register them with the base provost marshal and keep the ammunition and firearm in separate containers at all times until they reach the firing range, he said.

"There is no reason to bring a loaded firearm onto this installation, nor is it authorized," Garcia said.

Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or sbhatt@seattletimes.com

Charles E. Brown: 206-464-2206 or cbrown@seattletimes.com

Seattle Times staff reporters Hal Bernton and Lewis Kamb and news researcher Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report.