Marc Duvoisin
San Antonio Express-News
(TNS)
Aug. 20—In a troubling turns of events over the weekend, Air Force security personnel guarding the entrance to a training annex at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland twice came under fire in the dead of night.
The assailants have not been identified, and authorities have made sometimes contradictory statements about what their aims and motives may have been. No one was injured.
Here is what we know — and don’t know — based on reporting by Sig Christenson, the Express-News’ military affairs correspondent.
What exactly happened, and where?
It went down in the early hours of Saturday, Aug. 17. Guards from the Air Force Security Forces, who protect U.S. air bases worldwide, were keeping watch at the main gate to the Chapman Training Annex, at Ray Ellison Boulevard and Medina Base Road on San Antonio’s Southwest Side.
At about 2:15 a.m., they saw a sedan approach and heard gunfire and the whine of bullets flying past, according to accounts from the Air Force and the San Antonio Police Department.
How did the Air Force respond?
More guards were sent to the gate to bolster security, although no one will say how many.
Shortly before 5 a.m. Saturday, the sedan returned, and someone inside fired another volley at the gate, according to the Air Force and SAPD.
This time, the security personnel fired back.
How many attackers were there?
An Air Force spokeswoman, Stefanie “Stevi” Antosh, said it was more than one, but she didn’t provide a number.
NBC News, quoting an unidentified source, said there was a single shooter, along with one other person in the sedan, and that neither individual appear to be affiliated with the military.
Authorities provided no details of the car’s make, model or color.
Was any evidence found at the scene?
SAPD officers found shell casings near where the sedan had stopped. That’s all the evidence we know of.
Who did this, and why?
If the Air Force and the police know, they aren’t saying. But they have ruled out certain explanations.
Antosh said there’s no indication the shootings were politically motivated or an act of terrorism.
A few hours after the incident, she said there was “a sense” the incident was gang-related. But on Monday, an SAPD spokeswoman, Capt. Michelle Ramos, said police did not have evidence of gang involvement.
SAPD is investigating the incident as an “aggravated assault with deadly weapon.”
What is the Chapman Training Annex?
It’s the home of Air Force special warfare training. Long known as the Medina Annex, it was renamed in 2020 for Air Force Master Sgt. John Chapman, a combat air controller who was killed in a battle in Afghanistan on March 4, 2002, and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
Has this incident rattled the Air Force?
“Rattled” would be too strong a term. Authorities closed the Chapman Annex gate for a few hours, but it reopened around 9:40 a.m. Saturday. Lackland was never locked down, and the base’s security condition remained unchanged at Force Protection Condition Bravo.
By Saturday afternoon, there was little indication the entrance to the annex had been the site of gunfire a few hours earlier. A lone security officer was visible at the guard shack.
That said, Antosh revealed that Air Force Security Forces were working with local law enforcement to develop “comprehensive security measures” to protect gates at JBSA’s three major installations — Lackland and Randolph AFBs and the Army’s Fort Sam Houston — as well as Camp Bullis, a training range in northern Bexar County.
When was the last time something like this happened at JBSA?
Lackland was briefly locked down on June 9, 2021, after two individuals were reported to have fired shots at the base near the Valley Hi Gate and then fled on foot. No injuries were reported.
In 2016, Lackland was rocked by an on-base murder-suicide. Air Force Technical Sgt. Steven D. Bellino, a former Green Beret, killed his squadron commander and then himself.
Bellino had tried out for the service’s pararescue program. He breezed through the initial physical training at the Chapman Annex but went AWOL after disputing the results of a team-building exercise in which he and another trainee had to move a brick under water from one end of a pool to the other.
Bellino faced a court-martial for going AWOL. His lawyer negotiated a plea bargain that would spare him a prison term but would require him to leave the military. Bellino, 41, brought two Glock handguns and a knife to a disciplinary hearing and fatally shot Lt. Col. William Schroeder, 39, before killing himself.
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