Soldier: Hasan chased Munley at scene

KILLEEN, Texas (KXAN) - Police Sgt. Kimberly Munley came face to face with Maj. Nidal Hasan seconds before their shoot-out - and when she retreated Hasan advanced, according to a soldier who witnessed the entire exchange from a building next door.

"I kept thinking if I was outside I could have yelled to her, 'Hey, he's right around the corner,'" said Spc. Thomas Vecera, who could do nothing because he was trapped inside another building.

Munley has become a national hero for taking down Hasan after he had shot more than 40 people - and the few seconds in which he chased her, trying to kill her, are one of the most compelling moments in the deadly massacre at Fort Hood on Thursday.

Vecera said he first saw Munley running toward the Soldier Readiness Center when she came face to face with Hasan. After exchanging fire, she retreated back to the building from where she had come - and that is when Hasan came around the corner, chasing her.

"He took a shot at her, and he hit her, and she went down," said Vecera. "She was on the radio. I could see she was on the radio, and I guess she was saying, 'Officer down.' She was looking up at him. He had her at gunpoint and shot her again. When I saw that, I thought 'no, she's probably not going to make it because he shot her point-blank, from three feet away.'"

Vecera said Hasan started shooting again when other officers approached him from behind, and in the middle of gunfire, Hasan went down.

Munley has been credited with firing the shots that stopped Hasan's rampage.

That is when the soldiers mobilized and started treating their wounded comrades with any resources available.

"You're almost in disbelief when someone you've been training with for so long comes in, covered in blood, just saying 'Help me,'" said Vecera.

Another soldier who treated the wounded was Pfc. Melinda Martinez. A 19-year-old reservist who just graduated high school, she arrived at Ft. Hood one day before the shooting.

"I was in college studying Sociology," she said. "But, I'm ready to be deployed."

Martinez was was preparing to go to Iraq with members of her unit, when several of them were shot and two were killed.

"You go numb," she said. "You are not sad or angry, you are just numb and you do what you have to do."

With her training kicked in, Martinez started pulling in soldiers and treating them on tables. With no resources and every second precious, she used whatever resources she could find to save her friend's lives.

"In one wounded, I had to use my belt and as a pressure dressing I had to use my pad, my feminine pad to keep him from bleeding," said Martinez. "And, we got him into an ambulance and as far as I know he's OK."