Soldier shot in Kuwait says attack was total surprise

LANDSTUHL, Germany -- A Kuwaiti police officer accused two U.S. Army reservists of speeding in their unmarked car before pulling out his gun and shooting them for no apparent reason, the two soldiers said Monday.

"There was no reason to expect anything," Master Sgt. Larry Thomas of Lake Charles, La., said at a U.S. military hospital in Germany, where he is recovering from a gunshot wound to his arm.

"He may have seemed a little angry, but I can't see shooting us for that," he added.

Thomas and Sgt. Charles Ellis, who is also from Lake Charles, La., were driving along Kuwait City's ring road on Thursday when the police officer signaled for them to pull over.

"He said, 'You were speeding,' and I said, 'No sir, we weren't,'" Thomas, who was behind the wheel, told reporters at the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.

The officer, Khaled Al-Shimmiri, demanded Thomas' license and walked back to his car, then returned to the reservist's Toyota.

"He made a step away and I was looking at him unsnap his pistol and I thought maybe he'll hold the gun on us," Thomas, 51, recalled. "But he shot me right here in the chest and my arm went numb and I knew I'd been hit."

Al-Shimmiri then turned the gun on Ellis, shooting the 27-year-old in the face before. The officer got back in his patrol car and sped off. He was arrested the next day in Saudi Arabia and returned to Kuwait.

Authorities later disclosed Al-Shimmiri was mentally ill and had been patient at a Kuwait psychiatric hospital but several local newspaper said the officer hated Americans and opposed U.S. Mideast policies.

After the shooting, the reservists -- members of the 336th Finance Command in Lake Charles -- managed the 20-minute drive back to their base with Ellis holding the wheel while Thomas used his good arm to call superiors on a cell phone to report the incident.