Sgt. Gabriel Sanchez Staff Sgt. Rick Ortega of Copperas Cove was supposed to be at Fort Hood’s Soldier Readiness Processing site Thursday at 1 p.m.

But Ortega, who is to deploy soon, misplaced his medical checklist, and he returned home to get his paperwork and had lunch with his fiancee. When he returned to the Army base, the post was locked down because of an earlier shooting spree at the site.

“I could have been injured, dead,” Ortega said as he stood in the parking lot near Bernie Beck Gate. There, a host of television mobile units -- with satellites and tall towers -- filled the area, as did those awaiting to be reunited with loved ones on base.

The serviceman, originally from Tampa, Fla., said his mother told him: “God was watching over you.” Ortega waited to get back onto the military installation, so he could take part in a recall formation, at which time soldiers would be accounted for and their superiors would “make sure everyone is alive,” he said.

Ortega recently returned from Iraq, where he was deployed for two years with the 172nd Striker Brigade out of Alaska. He is to deploy to Afghanistan in January.

Had he not misplaced his checklist, Ortega said, “I could have been the first one shot or wounded.” “Or,” he said, “[I] could have helped someone.”

As newspaper reporters and television broadcasters waited for a follow-up press conference with Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, Fort Hood and III Corps commander, Sgt. Gabriel Sanchez talked with the media.

Earlier, his three sons had been scheduled for an early release from their schools on the base. Sanchez, who is on recovery leave with the 48th Chemical Brigade, 181st Chemical Company after having sustained a broken neck in a training exercise, picked up his 5- year-old, Elijah, at Clear Creek Elementary School.

But, as older sons Gabriel Jr. and Matthew and their fellow classmates filed out of their middle school building, the principal and teachers rushed outside to get the students back inside.

Sanchez’s eighth-grader and seventh-grader were quickly led into the campus gym. “I kept calling him [Gabriel Jr.] back, because we were losing signals on our cell phones,” Sanchez said. As the father and son were talking, news reports came in, saying a shooting had occurred near the school.

Sanchez told his oldest son to take Matthew to a safe place in the building. “I said, ‘You stay away from the windows.’”

Recalled the sergeant: “My son said he could hear popping [the firing of shots]. He said, ‘I don’t know exactly what it is.’”

The two brothers and a number of other students found refuge in the band room in the building’s interior, next to the gym.

As Sanchez spoke with a reporter, his wife and the couple’s kindergartner remained in a car nearby. “My wife is still stressed,” Sanchez said, as he and other soldiers waited to be admitted back on base once the lockdown ended.

“Earlier I was mad,” the Army sergeant said. “I was just trying to get to my sons and get them home.”

He added: “It [was] a sick feeling in your stomach knowing there was nothing I could do about it. They’re there, and I’m here -- it’s a sense of helplessness. There’s nothing I can do.”

Sanchez’s sentiments were shared by Daniel and Rachel Clark of Temple. His daughter, Madeline, attends Meadows Elementary, where she is a kindergar- ten student.

About 45 minutes before the shooting rampage began at 1:30 p.m., Maddie had been picked up by her stepfather, Brandon Gott, as the school had an early release. The two later went to Darnall Army Medical Center.

“We haven’t talked with Maddie, but she’s in a secured basement,” said Mrs. Clark, her stepmother.

Mrs. Clark works at a Temple orthodontics office. During the course of the workday Thursday, she heard disturbing news from the mother of a patient.

“She was really happy that it [the incident on base] happened at Fort Hood, not Temple, because that’s where her kids go [to school],” Mrs. Clark recalled.

“That’s when I freaked out, because not everybody’s kids go to Temple.”