November 5, 2009. They were sitting in plastic chairs at Fort Hood, waiting on shots and paperwork before a flight to Afghanistan. It was a processing center. No one in that room was armed.

Then Major Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, walked in. He was not there to clear them. Witnesses say he shouted “Allahu Akbar” and opened fire. Thirteen dead. Thirty-two wounded. He kept shooting until police put him down. He lived.

August 28, 2013. A military jury sentenced him to death. He had already told the court he was the shooter. The families buried their sons and daughters. The sentence sat on a shelf.

October 2026. Seventeen years after that room, the Army has approval to use a firing squad — the first time those rifles have been raised for a U.S. soldier since 1945. The secretary of the Army still has to set the day. The people in the plastic chairs never got that kind of time.

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