Tuesday, January 6th 2015, 9:38 pm
A gunman and one other person are dead in a shooting at a veterans' medical clinic in West Texas, U.S. Army officials said.
Fort Bliss Maj. Gen. Stephen M. Twitty confirmed at a press conference Tuesday evening that both the shooter and victim were killed in the incident. Both people remained unidentified.
Twitty did not say whether the gunman was shot by responding officers. He did also not provide any details on the victim of the shooting at the El Paso Veterans Affairs Health Care System.
Douglas Lindquist with the FBI says there are hundreds of potential witnesses, most of whom were seeking medical care. The FBI will be interviewing those witnesses.
CBS4 in El Paso reported that a doctor at the El Paso Veterans Administration Health Care System building had been shot during the incident, which took place about 4 p.m. EDT.
John Meza, a spokesperson for the office of U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, told the station that the person found dead may have committed suicide, but that has not been confirmed.
An active shooter had been reported at the William Beaumont Army Medical Center, which is adjacent to the El Paso VACHS facility. Both buildings were placed on lockdown, according to Gil Telles, Fort Bliss spokesman.
An inspector general's review of the El Paso VACHS revealed that patients who come to the facility can have weeks long wait times for a doctor's visit, according to the El Paso Times. The report, released last month made recommendations to improve the productivity of the system's services to veterans who had complained to O'Rourke, who commissioned the study.
"We found many veterans seeking care at the El Paso VA Health Care System faced challenges accessing care timely, particularly patients that were new" to the system, the report said.
The guman's identity was not released, and there is no indication yet that the shooting was related to any complaint against the VA system.
El Paso Independent School District officials placed Bassett Middle School and Travis Elementary on lockdown for athletics and after school activities as a precaution, but that lockdown was lifted later.
January 6th, 2015
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