Nidal Malik Hasan, Suspected Fort Hood Shooter, Is Army Psychiatrist

Details emerge on Nidal Malik Hasan, suspected Ft. Hood killer.

ByABC News
November 5, 2009, 7:10 PM

Nov. 5, 2009 — -- Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspected shooter in the massacre at Fort Hood, is a psychiatrist at Darnall Army Medical Center on the base, according to records uncovered by ABC News.

Hasan, 39, did not die in the crossfire and is hospitalized, contrary to prior reports that he had been killed.

He received his medical degree from the Defense Department's F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine in Bethesda, Md., according to the records.

Several sources have said he was soon to be deployed to Iraq.

A military source was quoted by the Air Force Times as saying Hasan had recently been reassigned to Fort Hood from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. In 2009, sources tell ABC News, he completed a fellowship in Disaster and Preventative Psychiatry at the Center for Traumatic Stress there.

Military officials told the Associated Press Hasan was at Walter Reed for six years before being transferred to Ft. Hood in July.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because military records are confidential, had access to his military record and said he received a poor performance evaluation while at Walter Reed.

Hasan appears in medical records from the Virginia Board of Medicine, and had a Maryland telephone number in an online file last updated in October.

Hasan had no prior overseas deployments, a Pentagon official told ABC News. An Army release shows he was promoted to the rank of Major in May 2009.

Hasan, born in Virginia, was single with no children. The Austin American-Statesman reported his parents were originally from Jordan.

Nader Hasan, his cousin, told ABC News Maj. Hasan has two brothers, one in the United States, the other in Jerusalem. The cousin described him as a pious lifelong Muslim.