It’s been four years. Hard to believe because it seems like, maybe, a week ago.

I can still hear the sirens of the police vehicles and ambulances screaming down the highway about a mile from the house. And I can still hear major dad telling me as I got in the car to head downtown to the store, “Jesus! That has to be a helluva wreck. Take the long way around.”

But the sirens didn’t stop. One of our neighbors, a base security guard recovering from knee surgery, was standing in his driveway when I drove by, and I hit the brakes to say “hi.”

He told me there’d been a shooting on base, but he didn’t know any more than that. Well, that alone was inconceivable, but we both figured probably a domestic dispute gone tragically sideways. It wasn’t until I got to the shop around 9:30 and the local news was on that the full scope of the horror – the unthinkable – became apparent.

It had been a terror attack and not from the outside. A Saudi flight student – whom they later found out had pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda two years before – brought a pistol into the schoolhouse and opened fire.

An aviation student from Saudi Arabia opened fire in a classroom building at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola on Friday morning, a U.S. official said, an attack that left three dead in addition to the assailant.

The assault was the second at a U.S. Navy base this week and prompted a massive law enforcement response and a lockdown at the base.

The student, who was fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy, was a second lieutenant in the Saudi Air Force, said two U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose information that had not yet been made public. The officials said authorities were investigating whether the attack was terrorism-related.

Saudi state media did not immediately report on the shooting. The kingdom has relied on the U.S. to train its military.

Eleven people were shot all together, including two sheriff’s deputies who were the first to respond, one of whom killed the shooter, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan said. One of the deputies was shot in the arm and the other in the knee, and both were expected to recover, he said.

He murdered Ensign Joshua Watson, Petty Officer 3rd Class Mohammed Haitham and Petty Officer 3rd Class Cameron Walters, and wounded Ensign Kristy Lehmer, Ensign Brianna Thomas, Airman Ryan Blackwell, Airman George Johnson, Jessica Pickett, Capt. Charles Hogue, Deputy Matthew Tinch and Deputy Jonathan Glass. One of the wounded deputies was the one who took the terrorist out, God bless him.

The killer and his cohorts knew exactly what they were doing, and what they were going to do. Willingly attempt to murder as many of the men and women they spent the better part of every day with for months on end as they possibly could.

That’s who these soulless fiends are.

The Saudi student who fatally shot three people at a U.S. naval base in Florida hosted a dinner party earlier in the week where he and three others watched videos of mass shootings, a U.S. official told The Associated Press on Saturday.

One of the three students who attended the dinner party videotaped outside the building while the shooting was taking place at Naval Air Station Pensacola on Friday, said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity after being briefed by federal authorities. Two other Saudi students watched from a car, the official said.

The official said 10 Saudi students were being held on the base Saturday while several others were unaccounted for.

Beautiful NAS Pensacola would close to the general public for the next four years. No admission for the National Museum of Naval Aviation, no Pensacola Lighthouse, no Fort Barrancas, no National Cemetery, no Blue Angles homecoming shows. If you weren’t a DoD ID holder, you weren’t getting on station. This one heinous, cowardly, craven act took precious loved ones from families, traumatized a welcoming community who could not understand – and still doesn’t – that kind of hate, and caused a beloved installation with all of its time honored events and traditions to be stripped away from that very community.

They only reopened the gates to the public this past May.

Of course, the sick individuals inhabiting this world couldn’t let this heartbreaking anniversary and its solemn moments pass undisturbed, either. I got a message from major dad about 10 am that they were on a “Shelter in Place” lockdown on base, for real.

Naval Air StationPensacola closed for about three hours after law enforcement received a bomb threat Wednesday morning, on the fourth anniversary of a terrorist attack on the base in which three died.

The suspect is now in custody:https://t.co/A63uzfN6f6

— Stars and Stripes (@starsandstripes) December 6, 2023

The day after the shooting – December 7, 2019 – I was at work as usual in my friend’s men’s store in our gorgeous little downtown. Everyone was heartsick, and no one could talk about anything but the tragedy on base. Then the phone rang, and it was one of our regulars who worked aboard NAS. He had an urgent request which set into motion one of the most wrenching experiences I’ve ever had, but one I am so grateful to have been able to be there for. I wanted to share with you the blog post I wrote when I got home that evening: The Heart of a Lion

“He was so excited about being a pilot,” his mother told me.

The pictures on her phone, one after another, scrolled slowly as she savored them. Held her finger over his face, rubbed his shoulder in the frame. Here he was last weekend, just glowing with happiness, playing with the little ones during a visit. Here he was with his dad – ALL the men in this family are big guys, happy guys. There’s the pictures at his Naval Academy graduation, him and his father, both so proud, with an arm around each other. She has his official Annapolis portrait, too.

“He was shot five times, they told us.” Oh, dear. God.

To hear a mother say that. I had my arm around her, like moms do to other moms – especially service moms, when they are speaking the unspeakable and unthinkable about their babies.

“They said he climbed over the partition and charged the shooter. Went crazy on him. And then still managed to get outside to the first responders. Tell them what he looked like, who was doing the shooting.”

“Oh, ” I said. “Oh, he had the heart of a lion!”

“Oh, yes. He did.”

Joshua would succumb to those bullet wounds shortly thereafter at Baptist Hospital.

I would meet his parents and two brothers the next day, as they tried to find a short order funeral suit for the eldest one. They are lovely people, rightfully proud of their hero, and devastated at his loss.

This couple has raised some awesome young men. Somehow, some way, they are handling this horrific, unfathomable event with such dignity and grace, you sense where the tremendous power of determination to charge an armed terrorist sprang from.

I held Joshua’s mom tight before she left, and told her, “I want you to know, please know, we are ALL with you in this. Every one of us has you all, and your son in our hearts. Thank you for your boy.”

Their magnificent lion of a son.

Joshua Kaleb Watson

For Joshua, Mohammed, and Cameron – Pensacola will always remember you.

#naspensacola pic.twitter.com/NQjG87C7H3

— 1gull3bouys (@1gull3bouys) December 6, 2023

Semper Fi