Officials: Pentagon shooting suspect dies

The D.C. Medical Examiner's Office says the alleged shooter at the Pentagon has died.
Beverly Fields, chief of staff of the D.C. medical examiner's office, said the body of 36-year-old John Patrick Bedell arrived at the medical examiner's office shortly after midnight.

Bedell was shot by two Pentagon police officers after authorities say he drew a weapon from his pocket and opened fire at a security checkpoint into a Pentagon subway entrance.A Hollister man accused of shooting two officers at the Pentagon

complex died from his wounds Thursday.
Law enforcement sources identified the suspect as John Patrick Bedell, 36. Bedell died hours after being admitted to a hospital in critical condition from injuries he received when officers returne gunfire, authorities said.
Bedell was a 1991 graduate of San Benito High School and attended UC-Santa Cruz, where he received a degree in physics. Bedell also did graduate work at San Jose State University.
The Hollister Free Lance newspaper reported that sources confirmed Bedell is the son of Kaye Bedell, the director of Allied Health at Gavilan College, and his father is John Bedell, Sr., a local financial planner.
The Washington Post reported that when a call was made to a home in Hollister, a man identified himself as John Bedell and said he had a 36-year-old son in the Washington D.C. area named John Patrick Bedell before hanging up.
Bedell's death was confirmed early Friday by Beverly Fields, chief of staff of the D.C. medical examiner's office; and Leigh Fields, medical legal investigator for the office. Both said Bedell's body had arrived at the medical examiner's office.
Two officers suffered grazing wounds when a gunman drew a weapon from his pocket and opened fire at the teeming subway entrance to the Pentagon complex at about 6:40 p.m. EST Thursday.
The officers wounds were not life-threatening and they were being treated at a hospital, said Richard Keevill, chief of Pentagon police.
"He just reached in his pocket, pulled out a gun and started shooting," Keevill said. "He walked up very cool. He had no real emotion on his face." The Pentagon officers returned fire with semiautomatic weapons. Of the suspect, the chief said, "His injury is pretty critical."
There are emerging signs that Bedell may have harbored resentment for the military and had doubts about the facts behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to the Associated Press.
In an Internet posting, a user named JPatrickBedell wrote he was determined to see justice for the 1991 death of a Marine in California. The death was ruled a suicide but has long been the source of coverup theories. The writer said the case would be a step toward revealing the truth behind 9/11.
The user also railed against enforcement of marijuana laws.
The screen name can be linked to the suspect in Thursday's attack through documents about a marijuana arrest that were posted on the site, which match the date of birth of the shooter and official court records available online.
The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon -- the U.S. capital's ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001 -- came four months after a deadly attack on the Army's Fort Hood, Texas, base allegedly by a U.S. Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings. In the immediate aftermath Thursday, investigators did not think terrorism was involved but were not ruling that out and did not discuss possible motives.

Officials said they were speaking with a second man, who might have accompanied the shooter, and were running his name through databases. No further information was available.
President Barack Obama was closely following the case with updates from the FBI through his homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan," White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said.
The subway station is immediately adjacent to the Pentagon building, a five-sided northern Virginia colossus across the Potomac River from Washington. Since a redesign following the 2001 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, riders can no longer disembark directly into the building. Riders take a long escalator ride to the surface from the underground station, then pass through a security check outside the doors of the building, where further security awaits.
After the attack, all Pentagon entrances were secured, then all were reopened except one from the subway, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. He said the subway entrance was likely to remain closed overnight at least.