“Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!”

Army Maj. Nidal Hasan’s words hung in the air along with the smell of gunpowder from his semi-automatic pistol.

On Nov. 5, 2009, the Fort Hood Army psychiatrist methodically and deliberately took the lives of 13 people, including a pregnant woman. Thirty-two others were wounded. The shooting is considered the worst mass murder on a military base in U.S. history, and more than four years later, the victims have yet to find closure.

Kerry Cahill comforts her mother, Joleen, as they join other family members to talk about Michael Cahill, who was killed during the Fort Hood shootings, during a news conference following the sentencing phase for Maj. Nidal Hasan, Aug. 28, 2013, in Fort Hood, Texas. (AP/Eric Gay)

For the surviving victims, life will never be the same. Retired Army Staff Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford Jr. worked as a psychiatric specialist at the base and had met Hasan several times. He still has difficulty coming to grips with the horrors he witnessed. He’s haunted by the screams of his coworkers whose paths crossed with Hasan in the waiting room at Fort Hood’s Soldier Readiness Processing Center.

“Please, I’m pregnant, don’t shoot my baby! My baby,” cried Pvt. Francheska Velez, a 21-year-old from Chicago. Velez had returned home from her deployment in Iraq because of her pregnancy. Lunsford can still hear her pleading for her life.

Velez’s cries didn’t matter to Hasan, who shouted “God is great!” in Arabic before taking her life with his FN 5.7 semi-automatic pistol, which had been mounted with green and red lasers.

Hasan was found guilty last year and has been sentenced to death, but the victims and victims’ families say they feel abandoned by the government they swore to protect and by the military they voluntarily joined. The military appeals process can be long and arduous; no U.S. service member has been executed since 1961, and attorneys for the victims told TheBlaze it could be many years before Hasan’s sentence is carried out — if ever.

SEE MORE AT THEBLAZE BY Sara Carter

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