Texas shooting - live: Multiple shots fired at base from outside, brigadier general says

Military officials in Texas have placed the at Lackland Air Force Base under lockdown after after gunshots were heard near the base on Tuesday morning.

Law enforcement and security officers at the base are responding after several shots were heard near the base at around 10am.

“Security forces and local law enforcement are currently responding to reports of gunshots heard off-base in the vicinity of Joint Base San Antonio - Lackland AFB,” the base said in a tweet on Tuesday morning.

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Brigadier General Russell Driggers, the commander of Joint Base San Antonio, said during a press briefing that between six and eight shots were fired from off base onto the base by what they believe was a single shooter in an isolated incident.

Brig Gen Driggers said that “right now in a situation like this, there’s a lot of evaluation needs to be done”.

“We still have the team out there taking a look at doing the investigation. So the first part is to assure the safety and security of all of our personnel on the base. And now we’re going to have a follow-up investigation. And so we got to let that run its course as they ... get us a picture of what actually happened,” he added.

The shooting only occurred in one location, Brig Gen Driggers told the press.

“To the best of my knowledge, that’s what we found out,” he said.

“Given recent events, people are going to be very tuned into this. And so you’re going to have multiple inputs, multiple phone calls, and it really is the team’s job to come together, evaluate what actually happened and that’s why we do the lockdown to give them the time and space to be able to do that and figure out if it’s one or multiple” incidents, he added.

“At this time, we believe that it was just the one, they responded and now we’re all clear,” he said, adding that an “investigation will help us work out if there [are] any other details,” he said.

Lackland Air Force Base is one of three military bases that comprise Joint Base San Antonio, situated in the suburbs of southwest San Antonio.

Lackland Air Force Base’s primary role is to provide recruits with basic military training.

In 2016, a student with the 342nd Training Squadron shot and killed the unit’s commander Lt Col William Schroeder before killing himself.

The San Antonio Express-News reported at the time that Technical Sgt Steven Bellino had been in the Army and the FBI before attempting to become a pararescueman. He went AWOL after he failed a water endurance test. He was detained and returned to the base, reportedly to face a non-judicial punishment, but instead discharged his firearm

Brig Gen Driggers, said, “we have multiple ways to communicate with personnel on our installations, both online and through a giant voice system”.

“I think that part of this is the initial words that get out there so that we can enact our procedures and then we try to figure out and use the space that we’ve given our defenders and SAPD to evaluate the situation so that we can move on,” he added. “I’m really proud of the way the team worked together. And obviously, we’ll take this incident and learn from it and continue to evolve our procedures and make these responses better in the future.”

Brig Gen Driggers said, “we take the safety and security of everybody here on base and in the local community ... very seriously. That’s why we have these procedures in place ... in close cooperation with Bexar County and with the SAPD”.

“We enact those procedures very quickly. I’m really proud of how quickly the team reacted. It’s normal to be nervous with these kinds of events and so we want to continue to have that close cooperation, so we can ... try to prevent these kinds of events from happening in the future,” he added.

Base commander Brigadier General Russell Driggers said he was unable to reveal if a suspect had been detained or identified, but the police assured residents that there isn’t a threat to the community, KXAN reported.

Law enforcement also said that there are no reports of injuries.