2010 Pentagon shooting

On March 4, 2010, John Patrick Bedell shot and wounded two Pentagon police officers at a security checkpoint in the Pentagon station of the Washington Metro rapid transit system in Arlington County, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. United States. The officers returned fire, striking him in the head. Bedell was killed from the wounds.

On March 5, 2010, media reports said that Bedell may have harbored entrenched bitterness towards the U.S. Armed Forces and that he had doubts about the official story of the September 11 attacks. He has also been described as a "follower of the 9/11 truth movement."

In 2006, he was arrested for openly growing cannabis on his balcony, which he explained in a podcast was due to his "belief that cannabis prohibition is the least defensible and most unjust aspect of the prohibitionist regime." He refused to cooperate with officers and was carried down the apartment stairs to a patrol car. He mentioned on his blog, Rothbardix, his arrest and subsequent dealings with law enforcement officials resulting from his arrest on marijuana charges and obstructing an officer. Bedell was described as motivated by a hatred of the federal government and an expressed desire to expose what he considered an injustice in the case of a military suicide he argued was a coverup.

He graduated from University of California, Santa Cruz in 1994 with an undergraduate degree in physics. He also attended San Jose State University in 1995–1996, studying biochemistry.

John Patrick Bedell (May 20, 1973 – March 5, 2010) was a computer programmer and engineering student from Hollister, California. He suffered from bipolar disorder and had been institutionalized several times, according to a 2006 Orange County court filing regarding an arrest for marijuana possession. It is unclear how or if the bipolar disorder affected his behavior in this matter.

He apparently wrote on a Wikipedia page that bringing attention to what he felt was military corruption would "see that justice is served in the death of Colonel James Sabow, as a step toward establishing the truth of events such as the September 11 demolitions and institutions such as the coup regime of 1963 that maintains itself in power through the global drug trade, financial corruption, and murder, among other crimes."