The soldier who killed three people before committing suicide in an attack on the same Texas military base where more than a dozen people were murdered in 2009 had shown no recent risks of violence, authorities said yesterday.
The gunman, identified as Ivan Lopez by Texas Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, opened fire at Fort Hood on Wednesday.
More than a dozen other people were injured.
Military officials declined to formally identify the attacker, an enlisted soldier with the rank of specialist, by name until his family members had been officially notified.
Army Secretary John McHugh said the soldier saw no combat during a four-month deployment to Iraq as a truck driver from August to December 2011.
A review of his service record showed no Purple Heart, which indicates he was never wounded.
The soldier saw a psychiatrist last month and showed no “sign of any likely violence either to himself or others”, Mr McHugh said. His record shows “no involvement with extremist organisations of any kind”.
“We’re not making any assumptions by that. We’re going to keep an open mind. We will go where the facts lead us. Possible extremist involvement is still being looked. He had a clean record in terms of his behaviour,” Mr McHugh added.
Within hours of the shooting, investigators started looking into whether the soldier had psychological trauma from his time in Iraq. Fort Hood’s senior officer, Lieutenant General Mark Milley, said the gunman had sought help for depression, anxiety and other problems, and was taking medication.
Among the possibilities investigators are exploring is whether a fight or argument on the base triggered the attack.
“We have to find all those witnesses, the witnesses to every one of those shootings, and find out what his actions were, and what was said to the victims,” a federal law enforcement official said hours afterwards.
Investigators searched the soldier’s home yesterday and questioned his wife, said Fort Hood spokesman Chris Haug.
Lopez apparently walked into a building on Wednesday and began firing a .45-calibre semi-automatic pistol. He then got into a vehicle and continued firing before entering another building, but he was eventually confronted by military police in a car park, according to Lt Gen Milley, senior officer on the base.
As he came within 20ft of an 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, Lt Gen Milley said.
Mr McHugh said the soldier, a Puerto Rico native, joined the island’s National Guard in 1999 and served on a year-long peacekeeping mission in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in the mid-2000s. He then enlisted with the Army in 2008, Mr McHugh said. His weapon was bought locally recently and was not registered to be on the base, Lt Gen Milley said. Suzie Miller, a 71-year-old retired property manager who lived in the same apartment complex as Lopez near Fort Hood, said few in the area knew him and his wife well because they had only moved in a few weeks ago.
“I’d see him in his uniform heading out to the car every morning,” Ms Miller said. “He was friendly to me and a lot of us around here.”
Those injured were taken to the base hospital and other local hospitals.
At least three patients were reported to be in a critical condition yesterday, but were expected to survive. The shootings immediately revived memories of the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, the deadliest attack on a domestic military installation in US history. 13 people were killed and more than 30 others injured.
Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan was convicted last year over that massacre. According to trial testimony, he walked into a crowded building, shouted “Allahu Akbar” – Arabic for “God is great” – and opened fire. The rampage ended when Hasan was shot by base police officers.
Hasan, now paralysed from the waist down, is on death row at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. He has said he acted to protect Islamic insurgents abroad from American aggression.
After that shooting, the military tightened base security nationwide.
In September, a former navy man opened fire at the Washington Navy Yard, leaving 13 people dead, including the gunman. After that shooting, Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered the Pentagon to review security at all US defence installations and examine the granting of security clearances that allow access to them.