When Ivan Lopez’s mother died last year, the US soldier suspected of killing three people at the Fort Hood base in Texas told friends the Army gave him just one day to attend her funeral in Puerto Rico.
That brief allotted window appeared to compound his grief over a personal double-loss: The death in October of his mother, Carmen, a nurse, came soon after that of his grandfather, according to Edgardo Arlequin, the mayor of Lopez’s hometown of Guayanilla.
“That was one of the reasons why he was very upset,” Arlequin said. “They only gave him 24 hours. He was very, very close to his mother. His mother was a nice person and everybody in the town knew her.”
No motive has been given for the shooting rampage, which officials said may have begun as a verbal altercation with another soldier or soldiers and ended with Lopez’s suicide.
But a day after a incident that also left 16 people wounded, a portrait began to emerge of the suspect as a 34-year-old soldier struggling with mental health issues as well as deep personal loss.
Josue Blasini, a 36-year-old tattoo artist in Guayanilla introduced as a childhood bandmate of Lopez, said his friend had been deeply affected by his mother’s passing and was upset by having to leave so quickly after her death.
“He said he wanted to spend more time with his family and friends to try to come to grips with what had happened,” Blasini said.
The account by the mayor and Lopez’ friend could not immediately be confirmed by Reuters. A US Army spokeswoman in Washington referred questions about the issue to the chief of media relations at Fort Hood, who was not immediately available.
While growing up in Guayanilla, Lopez attended Aristides Cales Quiros Middle School and Asuncion Rodriguez De Sala High School, where he played drums in the school band, Arlequin said.
He enlisted in the Puerto Rico National Guard in 1999, where he served in an infantry unit and as a military band percussionist, with a brief stint in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula as part of an observation mission, Puerto Rico National Guard Major Jamie Davis told.
