Guards stationed at an entrance gate at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland were attacked two times in the early hours of Saturday, Aug. 17. They eventually returned fire, before the gunmen fled the scene.
No arrests have been made, according to authorities, and no guards were injured. The attacks took place at the entrance gate for Lackland Air Force Base and the Chapman Training Annex, part of the wider installation. Around 2:15 a.m. the guards came under fire, with multiple shots aimed toward the gate.
“The security personnel stated they heard several shots fired as well as the fired rounds go past them,” Sgt. Washington Moscoso, a spokesman for the San Antonio Police Department, said in a statement.
The shots appeared to come from a sedan, which drove by the area. Additional guards joined the security team at the gate following the attack. In a second incident a few hours later, between 4:30-5 a.m., a sedan — authorities did not confirm if it was the same vehicle — stopped on the road to the east of the gate and fired more shots toward the security forces. This time the Air Force security teams returned fire, with multiple guards shooting toward the car. It’s unclear if the sedan or the multiple occupants in it were hit by Air Force personnel. Neither the Air Force or police indicated where the sedan went, although shell casings were found where it had stopped.
The San Antonio Police Department is the lead investigator of the shooting, which is being treated as an aggravated assault. In a statement, the department said the investigation is still ongoing.
The gate briefly closed following the shooting but reopened later on Saturday. There was no wider base lockdown.
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The Chapman Training Annex is where the Special Warfare Training Wing puts airmen through courses for special operations roles, such as Pararescue or combat control. However a spokesperson for the 502d Air Base Wing said there is no apparent connection.
“JBSA-Chapman Training Annex is home to Special Warfare Training Wing, but we have no reason to believe this happened for that reason,” the statement said.
Saturday’s shooting is not the first time shots have been fired at Lackland Air Force Base. In 2016, a former Army Green Beret who after struggling with mental health after his Army service, had joined the Air Force to try out for Pararescue, killed his commander and himself. The shooter had failed out of that job’s intense selection training on the Chapman annex. In 2021, Lackland Air Force Base went on lockdown after off-site gunmen shot at the installation before fleeing on foot. No one was injured in that shooting.
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