WA daughter of Fort Hood victim opposes livestreaming killer’s execution

Former Inland Northwest families who had loved ones at Fort Hood during the country’s deadliest military base shooting must face that day again as the government prepares to livestream the killer’s execution.

Ex-Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire at the Texas base in 2009, killing 13 — including 62-year-old Michael Grant Cahill from Spokane — and injuring 32, including teenager George Stratton III from Post Falls, Idaho.

Cahill was killed when he attempted to stop Hasan’s rampage by charging at him with a chair, according to news reports. Stratton was shot in the shoulder just 5 feet away from Hasan.

Hasan was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 2013. The Pentagon announced Thursday it would execute Hasan by firing squad on Dec. 3.

“It’s about time,” Stratton’s father, George Stratton Jr., told The Spokesman-Review Saturday. “They should have put him down a long time ago.”

Rather than a relatively private execution with selected witnesses, Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told media, the execution would be livestreamed for public view. It would be the first time the U.S. military broadcasts an execution live on the internet.

“It’s kind of morbid,” Stratton’s father said. “I don’t know if I’d watch it or not. The military asked me if I wanted to watch in person. At first, I said yes. But when they come back to me, I’ll probably say no. It’s going to be the same result regardless.”

While the military notified the victims’ families of the execution, Keely Vanacker, Cahill’s daughter, learned through social media the execution would be streamed. It blindsided her.

“Livestreaming and taking joy in a tragedy that has deeply affected our family doesn’t bring my dad back. This is a serious event and it’s not there for people’s entertainment,” Vanacker said. “Regardless of the fact he did horrific things that affected our family … making this something we can all watch stabs us in the back. (Hegseth) is putting more attention on the killer rather than the families and the wounded.”

‘Just trying to hang on’

Stratton Jr. said his son likely is unaware of the execution due to years of struggling with PTSD after the shooting.

“He is just trying to hang on,” his father said, “trying to survive. It’s been a nightmare.”

Stratton, then 18 years, was dozing off in a chair in the Soldier Readiness Center when he awoke to gunfire. He saw a sergeant lying on the ground who had been shot in the stomach and rushed to help. The shooter, standing behind him, had just finished loading a magazine. He had a dead look in his eyes, Stratton told The Spokesman-Review in 2009.

“He looked down at me,” Stratton said. “I turned away from him as fast as I could.”

Hasan fired, and the bullet went through Stratton’s shoulder. He rushed outside to find help and saw “blood on the concrete walkway, blood on the grass, blood everywhere.”

He received the Purple Heart in 2015, though he was struggling with the effects of the shooting and decided not to travel to the award ceremony in Fort Hood.

Instead, a U.S. Army general traveled from North Carolina to Stratton’s father’s home, where the Purple Heart was clipped onto his shirt in the backyard.

The military previously denied the Purple Heart to victims of the shooting, saying the attack was one of workplace violence, not terrorism. However, Congress expanded eligibility for the Purple Heart by inserting language into the National Defense Authorization Act of 2015.

“I’m still disappointed about how they handled it,” Stratton’s father said. “This was a terrorist shooting, too. Just like driving planes through a tower.”

Years later, Stratton is still struggling.

He’s been robbed on the street, ran with the wrong crowds, is unable to keep a job and is a patient at a mental treatment facility. His father said “he’s regressed” more and more over the years.

“He will go to a facility to get help, they’ll treat him for 30 to 90 days, and then a doctor and a judge will kick him out the door. Two weeks later, he’s back at another facility,” his father said. “That’s been a revolving door. I could name 15 hospitals he’s been in and out of. That’s his life now.”

Stratton was set to deploy to Afghanistan after the shooting, but stayed back so doctors could treat his injuries.

He spent Christmas alone in Texas because he was the only soldier from his unit left there. Years went by with little if any treatment for PTSD, his family said. Stratton was honorably discharged from the Army in 2011.

“The treatment was just drugs, painkillers. He was doped up. And he went haywire,” Stratton’s father said.

Maybe, if he had more intervention, he could have deployed to Afghanistan, come back and lived a normal life, his father believes.

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“It’s never going to change,” he said of his son’s circumstances.

Reopening an old wound

For Vanacker, Cahill’s daughter, revisiting the Fort Hood shooting is like reopening an old wound. She’s spent years choosing to focus more on her father’s life than the man who took it.

Cahill was working in Fort Hood’s clinic as a civilian physician assistant at the time of his death. He was honored in 2011 with the Army Award for Valor, which was presented to his wife.

“He was a loving and caring man. He valued people. It’s what made him a good physician assistant. It’s why people chose to see him,” Vanacker said. “I miss his laugh. My dad knew everything about everything; he just had big philosophical conversations about the world. And I miss having those conversations with him.”

Hasan’s upcoming execution changes little for Vanacker and her family. He was “already dead” in her eyes.

“I know other families who, for their closure, this is part of that for them. That is OK. I understand that,” Vanacker said. “I didn’t need it. But there is a big difference between how your punishment is death and following through with it, versus turning it into a spectacle circus … Livestreaming is not a (crime) deterrent.

“Regardless of what your beliefs are about the death penalty, valuing others is important for us to have a strong community.”

The decision to livestream the shooter’s execution drew bipartisan criticism from members of Congress and concerns from other Fort Hood victims’ families.

“I support bringing this terrorist to justice,” Republican Rep. Michael Baumgartner, who is running for reelection in Eastern Washington, wrote Friday on social media. “I do not support the public livestream of the execution. This should be reconsidered.”

Carmela Conroy, Baumgartner’s Democratic challenger, told The Spokesman-Review Friday it was a “horror and terrible irony” for Hegseth, “who claims to be a Christian,” to call for a public execution.

“Most of the world believes that public executions qualify as cruel, inhuman, and degrading,” Conroy wrote. “Secretary Hegseth is putting us in the company of regimes that blatantly violate their own citizens’ human rights.”

Vice President JD Vance told national media Friday he would not watch the livestream but did not offer any further thoughts on the decision, which President Donald Trump approved.

Trump told reporters, “by showing it, maybe other people won’t do what he did.”

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