Pensacola Shooting Updates: Gunman Was a Saudi Military Trainee

Around 11 a.m., Rita was sitting in her van on the side of the road, parked in front of a bridge that leads to the base. It was blocked off by several police vehicles.

Near her, another mother also waited outside the base with two of her children. Lucy, who also declined to give her last name, said she had called her husband repeatedly after learning of the shooting, but he did not pick up until about the fifth try.

He told her to tell their children that he loved them, she said, and a mix of emotions — anger, sadness, fear — flooded over her. Her family was safe, but she was frustrated to be kept off the base, away from her two other children and her husband. She said her husband had been preparing for a pinning ceremony scheduled for members of the Navy on Saturday.

The shooting was the second this week at a Navy base.

The first, at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Oahu on Wednesday, came as that installation was preparing for the 78th anniversary on Dec. 7 of the Japanese attack that marked the United States’ entry into World War II.

A United States sailor opened fire at a dry dock at the base, the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, fatally shooting two shipyard workers and injuring another before killing himself, the authorities said.

The motive for the shooting is not yet known. It was also not clear whether the active-duty sailor targeted the three shipyard workers — Department of Defense civilians — or fired indiscriminately.

The sailor was assigned to the U.S.S. Columbia, a submarine docked at the shipyard for maintenance, Rear Adm. Robert B. Chadwick II, commander for the Navy in Hawaii, said.

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Adam Goldman, Derrick Bryson Taylor, John Ismay, Lara Jakes, Eric Schmitt and Kalyn Wolfe contributed reporting.