Post Office Killer Trained Soldiers at Base in England

The Oklahoma man who killed 14 postal workers and then himself spent two weeks this summer at a U.S. Air Force facility in England teaching soldiers to fire rifles, a base spokesman said today.

A statement issued by the U.S. Air Force public affairs office at RAF Mildenhall in eastern England confirmed a report in the Sunday Times of London that Patrick Henry Sherrill trained soldiers to use the M-16 rifle.

“Tech. Sgt. Patrick Sherrill served two weeks at RAF Mildenhall beginning July 19. He was among 104 members of the Oklahoma National Guard who served their required two weeks’ annual training at the base,” the statement said.

RAF Mildenhall, 20 miles northeast of Cambridge, is technically a Royal Air Force base but in effect is run by the U.S. military.

The statement described Sherrill as a weapons instructor and said his course consisted of about an hour of classroom instruction and about half an hour on the firing range.

On Wednesday, the 44-year-old Sherrill gunned down 14 postal workers and then turned the weapon on himself in Edmond, Okla.

U.S. Air Force Sgt. Christina Dort, 24, a firearms instructor who worked with Sherrill at Mildenhall, was quoted in the Sunday Times as saying Sherrill was “a very nice and happy man.”

She added: “He did tease the two other instructors from Oklahoma that he was getting another job back home and he seemed very excited about it. But apart from that he seemed to be very popular with the men and I was shocked when I recognized his picture in the paper and read about what he had done.”

“I never saw him shoot,” she said. “I just saw him helping the others, and he was obviously very good, having done a nine-week course in Texas.”