THE GUNMAN
— Ivan Lopez, 34, was from Puerto Rico. He was married to Karla Lopez, the mother of his 2-year-0ld daughter.
— He spent a decade working as a police officer and serving in the National Guard, part of that time as a peacekeeper in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, before joining the U.S. Army.
— Lopez served for four months in Iraq in 2011, but did not see comba. He was not wounded in action while serving overseas, but self-reported a traumatic brain injury upon his return to the U.S.
— He was taking medication and receiving psychiatric help for depression and anxiety, and was undergoing a process to determine whether he had post-traumatic stress disorder.
— Associated Press
The soldier who killed three people at Fort Hood may have argued with another service member prior to the attack, and investigators believe his unstable mental health contributed to the rampage, authorities said Thursday.
The base’s senior officer, Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, said there is a “strong possibility” that Spc. Ivan Lopez had a “verbal altercation” with another soldier or soldiers immediately before Wednesday’s shooting, which unfolded on the same Army post that was the scene of a 2009 mass shooting.
However, there’s no indication that he targeted specific soldiers, Milley said.
Lopez never saw combat during a deployment to Iraq and had shown no apparent risk of violence before the shooting, officials said.
The 34-year-old truck driver from Puerto Rico seemed to have a clean record that showed no ties to extremist groups. But Army Secretary John McHugh promised that investigators would keep all avenues open in their inquiry of the soldier whose rampage ended only after he fired a final bullet into his own head.
“We’re not making any assumptions by that. We’re going to keep an open mind and an open investigation. We will go where the facts lead us,” McHugh said, explaining that “possible extremist involvement is still being looked at very, very carefully.”
Scott & White Memorial Hospital in nearby Temple was still caring for five of the 16 people who were wounded. Three were in serious condition, and two others were in good condition.
Hospital officials had no information about patients being treated elsewhere, including at a base hospital. But because the hospital is the area’s only trauma center, the patients with the most serious injuries were probably taken there.
Within hours of Wednesday’s assault, investigators started looking into whether Lopez had lingering psychological trauma from his time in Iraq. The shooter had sought help for depression, anxiety and other problems, and was taking medication, military officials said.
Investigators searched the soldier’s home Thursday and questioned his wife, Fort Hood spokesman Chris Haug said.
Lopez apparently walked into a building Wednesday and began firing a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol. He then got into a vehicle and continued firing before entering another building. He was eventually confronted by military police in a parking lot, according to Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, senior officer on the base.
As he came within 20 feet of a police officer, the gunman put his hands up but then reached under his jacket and pulled out his gun. The officer drew her own weapon, and the suspect put his gun to his head and pulled the trigger a final time, Milley said.
Lopez grew up in Guayanilla, a town of fewer than 10,000 people on the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico, with a mother who was a nurse at a public clinic and a father who did maintenance for an electric utility company.
Glidden Lopez Torres, who said he was a friend speaking for the family, said Lopez’s mother died of a heart attack in November.
The soldier was upset that he was granted only a 24-hour leave to attend her funeral, which was delayed for nearly a week so he could be there, the spokesman said. The leave was then extended to two days.
Lopez joined the island’s National Guard in 1999 and served on a yearlong peacekeeping mission in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in the mid-2000s. He enlisted with the Army in 2008, McHugh said.
Lopez saw no combat during a four-month deployment to Iraq as a truck driver in 2011. A review of his service record showed no Purple Heart, indicating he was never wounded, McHugh said. He arrived at Fort Hood in February from Fort Bliss, Texas.
He saw a psychiatrist last month and showed no “sign of any likely violence either to himself or others,” McHugh said.
Shaneice Banks, a 21-year-old business-management student who lived downstairs from the Lopezes, said her husband, who also works at Fort Hood, helped the couple move in. Hours before the shooting, Banks said she ran in to Lopez when he came home for lunch.
“He was going to his car, and I was like ‘Hey, how’s your day going?’ And he seemed perfectly fine. He was like, ‘Day’s going pretty good. I’ll see you whenever I come back home.’”
When word came out that there was a shooting at the base, Banks saw Lopez’s wife frantically calling her husband over and over, trying to reach him via cellphone from the apartment’s shared courtyard.
Xanderia Morris lives next door to Banks. She also saw Karla Lopez distraught in the courtyard.
“We tried to console her. She called some people over, and we were consoling her, and then she started up the stairs back to his apartment, and they identified him as the shooter on television. She just broke down. We had to rush her up the stairs so nothing would happen to her,” Morris said.
About the Author
