Washington Navy Yard gunman Aaron Alexis’ mother apologized Wednesday for her son’s actions, saying she was glad that he is “now in a place where he can no longer do harm to anyone.”
“I don’t know why he did what he did, and I’ll never be able to ask him why,” Cathleen Alexis said in a statement recorded by CNN.
“I’m so, so very sorry this has happened. My heart is broken,” she said.
Her statement comes two days after Alexis, a military contractor, shot and killed 12 people at the historic Navy base.
Navy officials allowed employees back on the base Wednesday to pick up personal belongings, Capt. Monte Ulmer, commander of Naval Support Activity Washington, told CNN affiliate WJLA. It was scheduled to resume normal operations on Thursday, he said.
The facility remained otherwise closed except for a handful of mission-essential workers as authorities worked to piece together what triggered the shooting.
So far, their investigation has uncovered little to explain the rampage, a senior law enforcement source told CNN.
Federal investigators have collected Alexis’ computer and other possessions from the hotel where he spent his last days, the source said. They also worked to talk to people he’d met since coming to Washington three weeks before Monday’s shooting spree at the Navy Yard.
But nothing so far has pointed to a specific motive for the killings, a second law enforcement source told CNN.
There are potential clues: in August, he told police in Newport, Rhode Island, that he was hearing voices and was convinced that someone was using a “microwave machine” to send vibrations into his body to keep him awake, according to an incident report.
He’d sought help from Veterans Affairs hospitals around the capital, law enforcement sources told CNN. One said he talked of hearing voices and having problems sleeping.
Alexis’ checkered history as a Navy sailor and run-ins with police also seemed to offer evidence of a sometimes troubled personality.
But even that, Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby said, offered no hint that Alexis was dangerous.
“Looking at the offenses while he was in the Navy, the offenses while he was in uniform, none of those give you an indication that he was capable of this sort of brutal, vicious violence,” Kirby told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
Meanwhile, hospital officials said one of the three hospitalized victims of the attack had been released. The woman had been injured by a bullet that struck behind her ear, doctors previously said. Two other people — a civilian and a Washington police officer — remain hospitalized in fair condition, doctors say. The officer, Scott Williams, is believed to have fired the shot that killed Alexis, ending his rampage.
The White House announced President Barack Obama will attend a memorial service for the victims at the Navy Yard on Sunday.
“The president will want to mourn the loss of these innocent victims and share in the nation’s pain in the aftermath of another senseless mass shooting,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
Investigators scour crime scene, hotel and beyond
Authorities say Alexis entered the Navy Yard on Monday morning using a valid identification card. He went into Building 197, where the killings all took place, carrying a bag that may have contained a disassembled shotgun, a federal law enforcement source said. Surveillance video shows him walking into a bathroom in the building and coming out with the shotgun, the official said.
Two days before Monday’s shooting, Alexis spent “a couple hours” shooting at Sharpshooters Small Arms Range in northern Virginia before paying $419 for a Remington 870 shotgun and a small amount of ammunition, said the store’s attorney, J. Michael Slocum. Alexis passed a federal background check for the purchase, Slocum said.
While authorities have provided few details of what happened inside Building 197, witnesses reported seeing what appeared to be a determined gunman taking aim at seemingly random victims. Twelve people died and eight were wounded. The rampage ended when Alexis was shot to death.
Federal law enforcement sources say authorities recovered three guns from the scene: a shotgun and two handguns. The two handguns, sources say, may have been taken from guards at the naval base.
FBI teams remained at the base Wednesday amid a nationwide investigation that U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen said could take “weeks and months.”
Authorities also pleaded for the public’s help.
“No piece of information is too small,” Valerie Parlave, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, said Tuesday.
CNN’s Pearson and Ed reported and wrote from Atlanta; Brown reported from Washington. Phil Gast, Catherine E. Shoichet. Greg Botelho, Chris Lawrence, Barbara Starr, Chris Cuomo, John King, Deborah Feyerick, Evan Perez, Tom Cohen, Dan Merica, Larry Shaughnessy, Brian Todd, Alan Silverleib, Susan Candiotti, Joe Johns, Eliott C. McLaughlin, Joe Sterling, Paul Courson and Ed Lavandera also contributed to this report.
Michael Pearson, Ed Payne and Pamela Brown | CNN
