Fort Hood survivors speak out on Pentagon’s decision to livestream Hasan’s execution

For two of the survivors of the Fort Hood shooting, the news that the execution of the gunman who attempted to take their lives nearly 17 years ago will be livestreamed for the public to see has unearthed complicated emotions.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth confirmed Thursday that the execution of Nidal Hasan, a former army psychiatrist who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others in the November 2009 mass shooting, will be open to the public and livestreamed online.

Hasan, who described the shooting as an act of jihad, is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 3 by eight military service members — marking the first military execution since 1961, as well as the first by firing squad since 1945.

Alonzo Lunsford had served in the Army since 1990, and at the time of the shooting was a sergeant stationed at Ford Hood. Hasan shot Lunsford seven times — including in the head and in the stomach — and Lunsford witnessed Hasan kill several colleagues that he had become good friends with.

Lunsford, who retired from the Army in 2013, told ABC News he plans on attending the execution in December because he wants to “lock eyes” with Hasan while he takes his last breath.

“I want him to be able to look at my eyes and to let him understand I won’t be defeated, can’t be defeated. I am no longer a victim, his victim. I am a survivor,” Lunsford said.

Lunsford said he welcomed President Donald Trump’s approval to proceed with the execution of Nidal Hasan on Monday, saying that he feels as if he and the other survivors of the shooting would finally obtain some closure. He even said that he completely agrees with the administration’s selected method of carrying out the execution via firing squad.

“It’s how he shot us,” Lunsford said.

Even so, Lunsford says he has misgivings about the Pentagon’s plan to livestream Hasan’s execution, and said he believes it should only be broadcast to the survivors and the families of those who perished in the shooting.

“I don’t want this to be viewed upon as a spectacle, like a pay-per-view event, or like going to a basketball tournament,” he said.

Lunsford said that he believes setting a precedent of livestreaming executions for anyone to watch does not align with the responsibility of the U.S. to serve as a moral example for the rest of the world.

“We’re not trying to meet a standard — we’re trying to set a standard for the free world,” he said.

Some Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike condemned the Pentagon’s announcement about the livestreaming of the execution, with some even likening the decision to the public executions broadcast by terrorist groups in the Middle East.

“I absolutely support the sentence of death, but live-streaming executions is what jihadists do,” Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, wrote on X. “America is better than that.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Adam Smith, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said that livestreaming an execution “makes a mockery of our legal system.”

“We are a democratic country and should take the rule of law seriously, not turn it into a spectacle,” Smith wrote in a statement.

Dayna Ferguson Roscoe was just 21 years old at the time of the shooting, serving as a specialist in the Army. She was shot three times in her arm, her shoulder and her thigh, and credits her survival to a birth defect that caused one of the bullets to ricochet off of her stomach and into her thigh instead.  

Roscoe said that although she did not expect that the execution would be livestreamed, she believes it follows a historical tradition.

“It’s not completely shocking, given that death and war have historically always been documented through photographs and video. But it’s just not something I expected to hear,” she told ABC News.

“I hadn’t really thought about if I agree with the decisions being made — but it doesn’t make a difference in what happens to him,” Roscoe added.

Roscoe, who left the Army after she finished her four-year enlistment, is still figuring out arrangements to attend the execution.

Despite the pain that she endured at the hands of Hasan, Roscoe told ABC News that when she reflects on the day of the shooting, she is just thankful to be alive.

“I’ve been hurt worse in life than by Nidal. Sometimes you’re just the collateral damage in someone else’s warfare in their own mind,” Roscoe said.