Messages cheer soldier hurt in Fort Hood attack

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Some Hood wounded improve

As the nation grieved for the 13 people killed in Thursday's attack at Fort Hood, there was a glimmer of encouragement on Saturday as some of the people wounded in the shooting were able to leave one hospital near the Army base.

Four of the 10 shooting victims who were taken to Scott and White Hospital in Temple, Texas, were released Saturday. Two people were still in intensive care but were no longer on ventilators, said the chairman of surgery at the hospital, Dr. W. Roy Smythe.

"Some are out of the woods," Smythe said at a news conference, "but some of them, again, their injuries are so severe, only time will tell how they will do in the long run."

Fort Hood no stranger to violent outbursts

FORT WORTH — The Fort Hood community knows all too well about how stress and pressure are taking a tremendous human toll at a time when soldiers are deploying at a more rapid rate to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have stretched on for years.

The massive base one of the largest U.S. Army bases in the world has seen its share of incidents, including suicides, which prompted the base's former commander, Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, to speak out earlier this year about problems some soldiers experience when they come home.

In the past year or so, suicide rates are up, domestic violence has increased and at least a dozen deaths reported at Fort Hood since last summer looked suspicious, officials have said. At the same time, more than 500 Fort Hood soldiers have been killed since the U.S. went into Afghanistan and Iraq.

Graham charity hits Haiti at a run

Linda Pierre winces as Dr. Leonardo Febres opens a small flap in her full-leg cast to check the healing of her left tibia, severely broken during the mammoth earthquake. "It's OK, it's OK," he soothes her.

He moves quickly to the next bed, where 11-year-old Fednell Bienaime lies naked, a tree limb taped to his broken right leg to hold it in place.

"The boy needs cirugia ," Febres says, mixing English and his native Spanish. "The boy needs surgery."

Fort Hood officer says injury will change career

One of two civilian police officers who brought down the Army psychiatrist accused of going on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood said her wounds from the attack will cut short her career as street police officer.

Sgt. Kimberly Munley, a North Carolina native, said doctors have told her that she needs a total knee replacement, a surgery set for January, but that her new knee is likely to wear out sooner if she runs or carries the 15- to 25-pound gear pack required by her job.

"I do want to stay in law enforcement. I'm not going to be able to do what I did before, which is basically work the street," she told Wilmington, N.C., television station WECT on Wednesday. "It's going to give me another avenue to look in as far as possibly teaching and instructing."

Former N.C. cop hailed as a hero

The police officer who brought down a gunman after he went on a shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army base was on the way to have her car repaired when she responded to a police radio report of gunfire at a center where soldiers are processed before being sent overseas, the authorities said Friday.

As she pulled up to the center, the officer, Kimberly Denise Munley, spotted the gunman, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, brandishing a pistol and chasing down a wounded soldier outside the building, said Chuck Medley, the director of emergency services at the base.

Munley - a graduate of John T. Hoggard High School in Wilmington and a former Wrightsville Beach police officer - bolted from her car, yanked her pistol out and shot at Hasan. He turned on her and began to fire. She ran toward him, continuing to fire, and both she and Hasan went down with several bullet wounds, Medley said.