The FBI officially identified the gunman killed in an attack Thursday morning on Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas, as 20-year-old Adam Salim Alsahli.
Alsahli’s attacked injured one sailor and is being treated as an act of terrorism, FBI officials said Thursday afternoon.
Alsahli was killed after Navy police responded to reports of an active shooter on the base at 6:15 a.m.
FBI agent Leah Greves said Thursday that there may be “a potential second related person of interest at large in the community.”
“We would encourage the public to remain calm,” she said. “If you see something, say something.”
Calling the investigation “fluid and evolving,” Greves declined to offer additional information regarding what happened.
One sailor was injured Thursday morning after being struck by a bullet, but a defense official said their protective vest stopped the round. The AP reported that she was able to roll over and hit the switch that raised a barrier, preventing the man from getting onto the base, the officials said.
The sailor was later released from the hospital, according to a Navy statement.
There was an initial concern that Alsahli may have an explosive device, but Navy experts swept the area and the car and found nothing. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details about an ongoing investigation. Officials were still working to process the crime scene late into the day and had recovered some type of electronic media.
Later, federal agents were seen carrying items from inside a house that a Corpus Christi police tactical unit had surrounded and a public records search by local television station KRIS indicated was Alsahli’s last known address. A police spokesman would not confirm that the activity was related to the shooting at the Naval station.
The shooting is the third such incident on a Navy base in the past six months.
A Saudi flight student at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, shot and killed three sailors on the base in December.
Authorities announced this week that the gunman had reportedly communicated with al-Qaida operatives in planning the attack.
Kieschnick said that while Corpus Christi does take international students, they have not accepted any Saudi students since the Pensacola shootings.
Also in December, a sailor opened fire at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, Hawaii, killing two Defense Department workers and wounding a third before taking his own life.
More information will be provided as it becomes available.
This is a developing story. Stay with Navy Times for updates. Information from the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Howard Altman is an award-winning editor and reporter who was previously the military reporter for the Tampa Bay Times and before that the Tampa Tribune, where he covered USCENTCOM, USSOCOM and SOF writ large among many other topics.
Geoff is the managing editor of Military Times, but he still loves writing stories. He covered Iraq and Afghanistan extensively and was a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. He welcomes any and all kinds of tips at geoffz@militarytimes.com.
