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The meeting was in a building around the corner from the troop readiness center at Fort Hood, the Texas military post where Beckett had spent much of her professional career as an Army captain. The meeting was held over the lunch hour so her reps -- many of whom still serve on the base -- could attend and not have to leave the base.
The meeting broke up at 1 p.m. and after some chit-chat, Beckett left the building and drove around the block to the PX. As she drove, she said, emergency vehicles screamed past her. She didn't think much of it at the time.
As she walked into the PX, people were rushing into the building. They were talking. That's when she realized something was up.
"They said there was a crazy man on post killing people," said Beckett, a 34-year-old York native and daughter of York City Councilwoman Carol Hill-Evans.
Inside the troop readiness center -- a block away -- a man was shooting soldiers. Authorities later identified that man as Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist who was about to be deployed to overseas. Thirteen were killed; at least 30 wounded. The rampaged ended when Hasan was shot, authorities said.
While she was in the PX with the rest of the midday shoppers -- everybody was on their cell phones, she said -- Beckett didn't have any of that information. Early on, she said, information was spotty. At first,
She called her husband, Timothy, also a former Army officer who now works for a civilian contractor on the base, to make sure he was OK. He told her they were locked down in the motor pool, out in the open, crouching behind vehicles. Nobody was sure where the shooter was and who was in his sights.
"It was pretty scary," Beckett said.
That's coming from a veteran who did a tour in Iraq. Her husband did three tours of Iraq.
"We have a lot of soldiers who just got back (from the war) and to come home to this craziness," she said, her voice trailing off.
After she called her husband to make sure he was OK, she called her mother to let her know she and her husband were safe and that their daughters, 1 and 3, were safe on an off-base day care.
She is still shocked by the shootings. The suspected shooter is an officer in his mid-30s, she said, not the kind of person you'd expect would go on such a rampage, if you could ever expect that kind of thing.
"From the reports we're seeing down here, the people who knew him, former patients, his co-workers, nobody suspected he'd do something like this," she said.
It's especially shocking that it happened on the base, one of the largest U.S. military posts in the world and home to 65,000 soldiers and their families.
"You have a sense of security on the base," she said. "It's crazy."
mike@ydr.com or 771-2046
