Fort Hood again: Man kills 3 and himself

KILLEEN, Texas (CNN) -

Fort Hood.

The name has been seared in the nation's collective memory since a soldier went on a deadly shooting spree here in 2009.

On Wednesday, it happened again.

Specialist Ivan Lopez went from one building at the sprawling Texas military base to a second, firing a .45-caliber handgun, killing three people and wounding 16 more.

The 34-year-old Iraq vet then put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, ending his life.

Authorities say they have not ruled out terrorism, but they were downplaying the possibility.

'There are initial reports there may have been an argument in one of the unit areas,' Lt. Gen Mark Milley, the post's commanding general, told reporters late Wednesday.

Officers picked up Lopez's wife at their apartment near the base in Killeen, and she was cooperating with law enforcement, an FBI official told CNN.

The man, whom a neighbor said often gave her a friendly wave, was apparently plagued by multiple mental health issues.

Emotional torment

He had arrived at the base in February, moving with his wife and their daughter into an apartment a little more than a week before the shooting.

They appeared to be a normal couple, said neighbor Xanderia Morris. 'They would smile whenever they'd see someone,' she said.

But behind Lopez's smile lay a history of depression, anxiety and other psychiatric disorders, according to Milley, and he was receiving treatment and medication.

He had served for four months in Iraq in 2011. And while Army records don't show him as having been wounded there, Lopez himself reported that he had suffered a traumatic brain injury, Milley said.

He was undergoing diagnosis procedures for post-traumatic stress disorder.

'He was not diagnosed, as of today, with PTSD,' Milley said.

Arriving at the diagnosis common among war veterans can take time.

Brought a gun

Lopez had been part of the National Guard in Puerto Rico, but he had left the Guard to join the U.S. Army, National Guard spokeswoman Ruth Diaz said Thursday. He carried out the killings with his own gun -- a .45-caliber Smith and Wesson semiautomatic pistol he bought after arriving in Killeen.

By taking it onto the base, he was breaking the rules.

'If you have weapons and you're on base, it's supposed to be registered on base,' Milley said. 'This weapon was not registered on base.'

In addition, people are not allowed to walk around with guns on a military base. They are required to store them in an armory.

Sequence of events

Around 4 p.m., Lopez walked into a building at the base and opened fire. He then got into a car, fired from the vehicle, got out of the car, walked into another building and fired again.

Over 15 to 20 minutes, he killed three and wounded 16 -- all of them army personnel, Milley said.

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