Naser Abdo, an AWOL soldier from Fort Campbell in Kentucky, was stopped just days away from attacking Fort Hood soldiers - which would have marked the second attack on this specific Army post in the recent past. Abdo was found and arrested right outside of Fort Hood with just one of the explosive devices police believe he was planning on detonating in a restaurant that many soldiers visited before attacking the Army post itself. .
Greg Ebert, an employee of Guns Galore, noticed Abdo's strange behavior while he was purchasing smokeless gunpowder, shotgun ammunition, and a semi-automatic pistol magazine. Furthermore, he had come to the gun shop in a taxi - which is pretty unusual for Killeen, Texas. Abdo even questioned what the smokeless gunpowder was as he bought 6 pounds of it. After making his purchases, Abdo ran out on his receipt and change. Ebert alerted the authorities, who then traced the tip back to Abdo, who had gone missing from Fort Campbell nearly a month earlier. .
Once arrested, Abdo revealed his motive to be a series of reoccurring arguments with other military officials about his upcoming deployment to Afghanistan that conflicted with his Muslim beliefs. After learning Pashto, a national language of Afghanistan, Abdo was scheduled to rejoin his brigade, but he refused because of his beliefs. "Preparing for deployment made me investigate my religion. The price of refusing to go is much lower than facing my God. If there is no divine inspiration, it is murder," he commented in an interview (Fernandez). .
Abdo was caught with a .40-caliber handgun, ammunition, razor blades, and materials to construct a bomb, which included smokeless powder, shotgun shells and pellets, two clocks, two spools of auto wire, an electric drill, and two pressure cookers, along with instructions on how to make a bomb. According to him, he was going to construct the bombs inside the hotel room and then detonate it inside of the restaurant (Fernandez).