NASA Tragedy: Gunman Kills Self and Hostage

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Building 44 at NASA Space Center, Houston

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A gunman took two hostages in building 44 at NASA's Johnson Space Center Friday. The gunman shot a male hostage, identified as David Beverley, and hours later killed himself as a Houston SWAT team broke through a door he had barricaded, said Capt. Dwayne Ready of the Houston Police department. A female hostage, identified as Fran Crenshaw, was found alive after having been bound to chair with duct tape.

The shooter was identified by police as William "Bill" Phillips, a NASA contractor, who worked for Jacobs Engineering, a Pasadena, California firm with $8 billion in annual revenue.

Officials had little to say about Phillips, who had worked at NASA for 12 or 13 years, according NASA officials, except to say that "up until today he was a good employee." There was no immediate motive for the shooting; nor did officials know of any direct ties among the three people involved in Friday's incident.

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The 60-year-old Phillips reportedly entered Building 44, the Communication and Tracking Development Laboratory, in the early afternoon and was seen by some employees there carrying a handgun. Phillips shot Beverley early on in the crisis and took Crenshaw hostage, officials said.

Although attempts were made to negotiate with Phillips, Houston police said they made established voice communication with him. After breaking into the room where Phillips was holding his hostages, police said there was a message "scribbled" on a dry erase bulletin board; the contents of that message weren't revealed. Phillips also apparently left a list of names and telephone numbers to be contacted. Phillips, who wasn't married and has no children, had no immediate relatives to contact. A NASA administrator said a cousin of Phillips' had been contacted; that cousin was listed on Phillips' personnel records as next of kin, NASA said.

Friday night Houston police were at Phillips' house and to gather evidence, looking for motive, looking for any clues as to what might have set the gunman off.

Neighbors have told reporters on the scene that he was "a nice man, always waved... was a friendly man." However, his neighbors don't appear to have known him all that well; when reporters at the scene were asked where Phillips worked, none of them knew he worked at NASA. Neighbors said he lived alone.

Security at the Space Center was beefed up in the aftermath of 9/11 said Michael Coats, director of the Johnson Space Center. And after the shootings at Virginia Tech earlier this week, the center had again reviewed those security procedures, "and concluded that we wouldn't change anything."

Although there is no known link among the three involved in Friday's shooting, Coats, during a news conference, ironically noted that apparently the three, along with a fourth unidentified person, "had lunch earlier today."

Below was among the first reports of the shooting incident:

Here's an overhead of building 44 as it sits on the NASA campus.