Killeen, Texas, mourns Foot Hood shootings

KILLEEN, Texas, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- Residents of Killeen, Texas, near the Army's Fort Hood, where 13 were slain in a mass shooting last week, say they share the military's grief over the slayings.

At the town's Hallmark Restaurant, The Dallas Morning News on Saturday talked to Mike Perez and Bill Turner, who were nursing cups of coffee.

"People who don't live around the base don't realize how impossible it is not to be tied to it," Perez, 50, a retired highway patrolman whose father was in the military, told the newspaper, while Turner, 71, observed that the Hallmark's usual noise level was down.

The newspaper said the men got a hug from tiny, 68-year-old Lynda Ellis.

"They call me the Hallmark Hugger," she said. "That's what people need now."

"We all thought it was another young soldier coming home to find his wife cheating," added Getarn Green, 42, a Killeen hair stylist. "But it wasn't. This is our 9/11, all over again."