Navy Yard Shooting
Remembering the victims
At least 13 people are dead and several others wounded after a shooting rampage at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday morning. We'll continue to add to this page as we gather more information.
Latest updates on the shooting
1. Michael Arnold 2. Martin Bodrog 3. Arthur Daniels 4. Sylvia Frasier 5. Kathleen Gaarde 6. John Roger Johnson 7. Mary Knight 8. Frank Kohler 9. Vishnu Pandit 10. Kenneth Bernard Proctor 11. Gerald L. Read 12. Richard Michael Ridgell
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Michael Arnold, 59
A distraught neighbor of Michael Arnold's in Lorton said he was a "wonderful person and a wonderful neighbor." She was on her way to Arnold's wife's house to try to console her.
The neighbor said Arnold, 59, had lived in the neighborhood for at least a dozen years, and was "the best neighbor ever."
His uncle, Steve Hunter, told The Associated Press that Arnold had been working at the Navy Yard on a team that designed amphibious assault ships.
Hunter said his nephew was also an avid pilot who was building a light airplane.
"It would have been the first plane he ever owned," Hunter said from Rochester, Mich., Arnold's hometown. "It's partially assembled in his basement."
Hunter told the wire service that Arnold and his wife, Jolanda, had been married for more than 30 years and had two grown sons.
"He was a loving son of his mother and his wife, and great father to his kids," Hunter said. "It's tragic. How can you get up in the morning and go to work and have that happen? How do bad things like that happen to good people?"
Correction: An earlier version of this report initially included incorrect information.
Story by Martin Weil
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Martin Bodrog, 54
No additional information available at this time.
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Arthur Daniels, 51
For the past two years, Arthur Daniels — grandfather of nine — had relocated and installed office furniture in federal government buildings around the region. On Monday, he went to work inside the Naval Yard.
He spotted a gunman running down a hallway in Building 197, according to witnesses. He and a colleague ran. They arrived at an elevator and frantically pushed the button.
The gunman shot Daniels in the back, a witness said.
"It was totally surreal," said the witness, who worked with Daniels.
His wife, Priscilla Daniella, wept while recalling how she waited all day to hear news.
"I don't know why they shot him," she said of Daniels, who has five children. "He was a good father and hard worker."
Daniels was a subcontractor for District Furniture Repair in Arlington County. "He has this great personality and is always helping others," said Lewis R. Yancey II, who owns the company. "And I have to wonder if he was doing that when he was shot."
Daniels's son, Arthur Jr., said the family was struggling to "understand why."
"All he did was go to work," he said. "That was his only crime."
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Story by Emily Wax-Thibodeux;
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Sylvia Frasier, 53
All day and into the night, they waited for news. Inside a three-bedroom home in Prince George's County, Sylvia Frasier's parents and siblings gathered, hoping to hear something about her fate.
The family had not been able to reach Sylvia, a 53-year-old network-security administrator with the Naval Sea Systems Command, since they'd heard about the mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday morning.
The Frasiers prayed and watched the news. They clutched their iPhones and clasped each other's hands every time a cellphone rang or beeped with a text message. Their minister came over, and everyone sat on the couches and sang from the Bible.
By 7 p.m., there still had been no word on the whereabouts of Sylvia, the second-youngest of James and Eloise Frasier's seven children and a resident of Charles County.
The phone of Wendy Edmonds, 52, the youngest of the siblings, rang again. It was the third-oldest sibling, Lindlee Frasier, calling from the District.
"Okay, Sylvia's in the hospital. She's injured. The FBI talked to me," Lindlee told Edmonds. Authorities said they were trying to figure out which hospital and how badly she was hurt.
Edmonds worried that Sylvia might be more than injured. She tried to prepare her family for the worst.
"No matter how we feel, no matter what information we get from the FBI, we have got to forgive," she said. "We have to forgive. We can't become bitter."
Finally, shortly before 10 p.m., Lindlee and a brother arrived at their parents' home with news they couldn't bring themselves to deliver by phone: Sylvia was dead.
"He killed my sister," Edmonds cried.
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Story by Ian Shapira
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Kathleen Gaarde, 62
Patrick Bolton knew that his neighbor Kathleen Gaarde worked at the Navy Yard as a financial analyst, so when the news broke of a mass shooting there, he tried reaching out to her and her family. Bolton, 31, said he played with Gaarde's son, Christopher, in their upper-middle-class neighborhood in the Lake Ridge area of Prince William County, and he remained close with Kathleen, her husband and her daughter, Jessica, who still stayed in her parents' home.
Informed by a reporter that Kathleen Gaarde had died, Bolton seemed to fight back tears.
"She just helped make it a good home for her family and worked hard and provided everything her family could need," Bolton said. "They're the kind of people you want to live next door to you."
In an e-mail to The Associated Press, Gaarde's husband, Douglass wrote: "Today my life partner of 42 years (38 of them married) was taken from me, my grown son and daughter, and friends. We were just starting to plan our retirement activities and now none of that matters. It hasn't fully sunk in yet but I know I already dearly miss her."
A relative told The Associated Press that Douglass Gaarde worked for the Navy until his retirement last year.
Bolton said that Kathleen Gaarde was an avid Washington Capitals fan. He said she was a loving wife and mother, raising her two children and a dog in a modest home with a large pool in the back yard.
"The mother was just the kindest lady in the world," Bolton said. "I'm not even exaggerating. I've never seen her do anything but nice things for people."
Bolton said he and his family had tried to reach out to Gaarde when they heard about the shooting, but their messages were unreturned. He said he had been glued to the news coverage all day, hoping to hear some good news about his neighbor, who he thought might be close to retirement.
He said he could not fathom why someone would want to hurt her.
"There's no reason she would be targeted," he said.
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Story by Matt Zapotosky;
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John Roger Johnson, 73
A neighbor of John Roger Johnson said he was "just a delightful neighbor."
"He always had a smile on his face," the neighbor said. "He loved children. He loved our grandchildren. No one could ask for a better neighbor."
The neighbor said Johnson was a civilian who worked for the Navy, and described him as a "smart man."
She said Johnson had lived for more than 30 years in his Derwood neighborhood.
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Story by Martin Weil
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Mary Knight, 51
Work opportunities took Mary Frances DeLorenzo Knight all over the world during her decades-long career as an information technology professional, but what really mattered to her was her family, and her two daughters, said Theodore Hisey, her brother-in-law.
"Her daughters were her everything," he said. "They are in their twenties, so it was all about their colleges, their needs." He described the daughters as "independent and very grounded."
Knight, 51, whose LinkedIn profile said that she worked for the Naval Sea Systems Command, had been living in Reston for the last five years or so, and Hisey thought she worked at the Navy Yard for most of that time. She spoke everyday to her younger sister or her daughters, enjoyed working out and was a practicing Catholic, he said.
She was born in Fayetteville, N.C., the middle child of a Green Beret who was an instructor at Fort Bragg, and a stay-at-home mother, Hisey said. Her older brother also works in IT, for the city of San Francisco. Her younger sister lives in Tampa.
Knight graduated from Fayetteville Technical Institute in 1983, received a bachelor's degree from Raleigh-Durham's Campbell University in 1998 and a master's degree in computer resources and information management from Webster University in St. Louis, Mo. in 2004. Her LinkedIn profile also cited a degree from National Defense University in 2011.
"She traveled quite extensively," Hisey said, and not just within the U.S. "She lived in Germany, wherever the best opportunity was for her."
She was very outgoing, he said, but also "about as strait-laced as you can get."
Her LinkedIn profile said she switched just this month from being an information assurance manager at NavSea to a position in cybersecurity. She was also an adjunct assistant professor at Northern Virginia Community College in Loudoun and Annandale.
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Story by Patricia Sullivan
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Frank Kohler, 50
A neighbor of Frank Kohler in St. Mary's County said he was married with two daughters. A family member declined to comment.
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Story by Matt Zapotosky; Photo by AP/Family of Frank Kohler
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Vishnu Pandit, 61
When Vishnu "Kisan" Pandit was in his early 20s, he left India and moved to the United States in search of a better life.
He enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1974, finished his graduate studies and eventually moved to Maryland, where he and his wife raised their two sons.
"Kisan took great pride in being employed by the United States Navy, which he very proudly served in various capacities as a civilian for over 25 years," Pandit's family wrote in an obituary that one of his sons shared with The Washington Post on Tuesday. "Kisan felt extremely privileged to have contributed to the superiority of the U.S. Navy and the country that he served."
Pandit, 61, was one of 12 people killed in the Washington Navy Yard massacre on Monday. His family remembers him as "a kind and gentle man who loved his family, friends, dog, and job."
Pandit was born in November 1951 in Bombay. He attended a marine engineering college in Calcutta, then moved to Michigan "in search of a better life for his family," his family said.
Pandit was married to Anjali Pandit and has two sons, Siddhesh and Kapil, who are both in their 30s. The longtime family home in North Potomac has been filled with relatives and friends this week, according to neighbors.
The family plans to hold a private Hindu service. In lieu of flowers, the family encourages donations to the Wounded Warrior Project, any charitable organization supporting the U.S. Navy or the Humane Society of Montgomery County.
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Story by Jenna Johnson;
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Kenneth Bernard Proctor, 46
Breakfast beckoned in Building 197.
Kenneth Bernard Proctor, a civilian utilities foreman at the Navy Yard, didn't work in that building, his ex-wife, Evelyn Proctor, told The Associated Press. But, she said: "It was a routine thing for him to go there in the morning for breakfast, and unfortunately it happened."
The high school sweethearts had spoken early Monday morning, before he left for work, she said. They talked every day, even after their marriage ended in divorce earlier this year.
"We were still very close. It wasn't a bitter divorce," she said. "We still talked every day, and we lived 10 minutes away from each other."
He was, she said, "a very loving, caring, gentle person."
After failing to reach her ex-husband by telephone, Evelyn Proctor drove to the Navy Yard, fearing the worst, according to The Associated Press. She waited about three hours with other people looking for their loved ones and was informed around 8 p.m. that Kenneth Proctor was among the shooter's victims.
He was 46 years old and loved his boys and his Redskins. He'd been born and raised in Charles County, Md., and was still living there. He'd worked for the federal government for 22 years, his ex-wife said. They'd married in 1994 and had two boys together – both now teenagers. Their youngest son, Kendull, is 15. Their eldest, Kenneth Jr., 17, recently enlisted in the Army.
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Story by J. Freedom du Lac and AP
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Gerald L. Read, 58
Gerald Read left for work at 5:20 a.m. Monday, as was his normal routine. As "Jer" walked out the door, Cathy Read said: "See you tonight for dinner."
But her husband of 35 years did not make it home that night.
The 58-year-old information assurance specialist with the Navy Sea Systems Command had spent much of his career in military law enforcement and as a systems analyst, serving in the Republic of Korea and rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Army. During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he served at Fort Belvoir, working with the U.S. Army Materiel Command, supervising efforts to supply and maintain forces deployed overseas. In recent years, he turned to civilian work at the Navy Yard, managing security risks related to information and data.
Read was passionate about family life and his job, "totally reliable, really, really solid," his wife said. She had no details about what had unfolded before Read was killed Monday, but given his nature, she said, "I'm sure he was right in the middle of it."
Texts to her husband and calls to his office Monday went unanswered. Cathy Read did not begin to worry until the day passed and there was still no word. At about 9:30 or 10 p.m. Monday, officials arrived in person to deliver the tragic news.
A day after the massacre, she recalled her husband's love of reading – he was a Civil War buff – and his closeness to their daughter, Jessica, and his three grandchildren.
He also made a good friend in his neighbor, James R. Miles. "He was a fine family man and a good friend," Miles said. "I'm just devastated that he's gone."
At the Reads' home in the Mount Vernon area of Fairfax County, Read was often in the company of his black lab, Roderick.
"Rod was always with him – always," his wife said.
Read and his wife had been dog lovers a long time. They worked to help rescue labrador retrievers for more than a decade and there are three labs in their family — plus an Irish Setter and two cats.
The couple met while Gerald Read was attending Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and over the years he earned two master's degrees.
He was dedicated to the military, to work, to public service. "Definitely fit the mold," Cathy Read said.
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Story by Donna St. George
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Richard Michael Ridgell, 52
Richard Michael Ridgell, 52, had three daughters.
And they were a big reason he entered the world of social media — or Facebook, at least. In responding to comments from a friend who joked about only having three Facebook connections, Ridgell assured him: "I'm sure you'll get a lot of friends on fb. I got on at first just to keep up with my daughters!"
The exchange appears in a photo of Ridgell with a girls' softball team, the players posing with big, gold trophies.
A relative who asked not to be identified said some family members learned of Ridgell's death early Tuesday morning, a day after he was killed in the Navy Yard massacre. Ridgell was a former Maryland State Police officer, working on the force from at least 1983 to 2000, according to the state police.
Ridgell attended Brooklyn Park Jr/Sr High School in Maryland, according to his Facebook page.
Kelly Robbins, Ridgell's cousin, posted a message on her Facebook profile Tuesday morning after learning of his death: "We sure will miss you cousin Michael! Can't believe you were one of the 12 taken from us yesterday, kind of feels like a dream
that we are all waiting to wake up from. But we all know you are in a better place and watching over each of your family members.
Your laugh, smile & all the memories will help us get through this terrible time. Till we meet again ... love and hugs to you."
Story by Lynh Bui
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/local/navy-yard-shooting-victims/