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Recent mass shootings in the U.S.

- Nov. 5, 2009: The Army says 12 people were killed and 31 wounded in a shooting rampage at its Fort Hood base in Texas. Army officials initially said the suspected gunman was among the dead, but later said he survived and was hospitalized.

- April 3, 2009: A 41-year-old man opened fire at an immigrant community center in Binghamton, New York, killing 11 immigrants and two workers. Jiverly Wong, a Vietnamese immigrant and a former student at the center, killed himself as police rushed to the scene.

- March 10, 2009: Michael McLendon, 28, killed 10 people, including his mother, four other relatives and the wife and child of a local sheriff's deputy, across two rural Alabama counties. He then committed suicide.

- Dec. 5, 2007: 19-year-old Robert A. Hawkins opened fire with a rifle in Omaha, Neb., at a Von Maur store in the Westroads Mall, killing eight people before taking his own life. Five more people were wounded, two critically.

- April 16, 2007: Cho Seung-Hui, 23, fatally shot 32 people in a dorm and a classroom at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, then killed himself in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

- Feb. 12, 2007: 18-year-old Sulejman Talovic killed five and wounded four at the Trolley Square mall in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was then shot and killed by police.

- Oct. 2, 2006: Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, shot to death five girls at West Nickel Mines Amish School in Pennsylvania, then killed himself.

- March 21, 2005: 16-year-old student Jeffrey Weise killed nine people, including his grandfather and his grandfather's companion at home, and then five fellow students, a teacher and a security guard at Red Lake High School in Red Lake, Minnesota, before killing himself.

Thursday's shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, shocked people in communities across the nation, including folks in the Mid-Ohio Valley.

Nancy Matheny, activities director at Marietta's O'Neill Senior Center, said her son, Capt. John Matheny resigned his commission with the U.S. Army earlier this year, although he is still a Reservist.

"John was stationed at Fort Hood, but he's now living in Kentucky," she said. "(Fort Hood) is the largest military reservation in the world - it's like a city, but it is just unbelievable that something like this would happen there.

Nancy had not talked to her son since learning of the shootings, but said soldiers who serve together are a close-knit group, and John would likely have known some fellow soldiers stationed at the Texas base.

"I would be berserk if he was still stationed there," she said. "And I can't imagine how worried those families (who have sons or daughters stationed at Fort Hood) might be."

Lowell resident Frank Thomas had just returned home around 6 p.m. Thursday and heard about the shootings on the evening news.

"Fort Hood is the main shipping in and shipping out facility for troops headed to Iraq," he said. "They said the shooter was a major in the Army.

"I think the trauma and stress of being under fire affects these men," Thomas added.

Joe Nicholas, commander of American Legion Post 159 in Williamstown, said coverage of the shooting was all over the televisions at the post Thursday evening.

Nicholas said he at first wondered about security at the base but noted that the attack came from a fellow soldier.

"You kind of don't look at your own like you do an outsider," he said. "It's kind of sad that we're coming to this that we can't trust our own people."

Nicholas, who served in the Navy for 20 years, said soldiers have to fight next to one another and often share close quarters, so they develop trust.

Marietta resident Barb Handschumacher, who served in the Army as a medic in the Vietnam era, said she always felt safe at military bases. She was never stationed at Fort Hood, but did serve at Fort Sam Houston, also in Texas.

"I was just shocked and very surprised that it could happen on an Army base," Handschumacher said of the shooting. "My first thought was for the parents of the young men (who died)."

Evan Bevins contributed.