Details of Fort Hood victims emerge but gunman's motive remains unclear

Details emerged of the victims killed at Fort Hood on Wednesday as investigators continued to examine how and why a soldier brought a gun on to the Texas base and began a shooting spree that injured 16 others.

Sergeant 1st Class Danny Ferguson was 39 and from the small Florida town of Mulberry, near Tampa. He had just returned from Afghanistan, WTSP News reported. Ferguson's fiancee, Kristen Haley, is also a soldier stationed at Fort Hood and was nearby when the incident started. She said that he used his body to keep a door closed so that Ivan Lopez could not enter.

"If he was not being the one against that door holding it, that shooter would have been able to get through and shoot everyone else," she told the station.

Sergeant Timothy Owens, 37, was originally from Illinois and later lived in Missouri. The father of two teenage children, he had recently remarried and was working as a counsellor. His mother, Mary Muntean, told the Associated Press that he dropped out of high school in 1995 and joined the army in 2004.

She said she was still celebrating a recent reunion with a daughter she gave up for adoption at birth when she saw the news on television and was unable to reach her son. She took phone calls from his wife, telling her first that he had been shot and was in hospital and then that he had died from a chest wound.

"She said, 'Mom, I want to tell you how sorry I am. Tim's gone.' I broke down. I'm 77 years old and I can't hardly take this," Muntean said.

Sergeant Carlos Rodriguez was planning to retire from the military soon, according to CNN. The 38-year-old reportedly had family in Puerto Rico and Florida and had served in the armed forces for 20 years. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported that Rodriguez

spent time as a supply sergeant at a barracks in Hawaii before leaving for Fort Hood in 2011.

"He was the epitome of what you would want a leader to be in the army," Joshua Adams, who served in the same company as Rodriguez

, told the newspaper. "He has always taken care of soldiers. He survived all these deployments, just to come back ... It's super unfortunate."

The army has not formally released the names of the victims but on Thursday the Fort Hood commander identified the suspected gunman as Lopez, a married 34-year-old from Guayanilla, Puerto Rico, who lived in an apartment near the base with his family. US army records show Lopez entered active service in June 2008, and spent time in Egypt and Iraq. He received several awards and decorations and arrived at Fort Hood last February from another Texas base, Fort Bliss.

His mother reportedly died suddenly last November. Officials said he was undergoing treatment for mental problems including depression, anxiety and insomnia and was being assessed to determine whether he had post-traumatic stress disorder. They said he was taking medication and had undergone a full psychiatric evaluation last month which did not indicate any likelihood of violent behaviour.

Lopez's family released a statement on Friday saying "recent changes when transferring to the base surely affected his existing condition because of his experiences as a soldier." Ivan Lopez said his son "must not have been in his right mind" and asked for prayers "for the affected families".

One focus for the investigation is a verbal altercation Lopez had with other soldiers that is thought to have taken place shortly before the shooting.

Lieutenant General Mark Milley told reporters: "We have very strong evidence that he had a medical history that indicates an unstable psychiatric or psychological condition" and that "we believe that to be the fundamental underlying causal factor".

He said that Lopez died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head after he was confronted in a parking lot on the base by a military police officer.

Security protocols were reviewed after the base was the scene of another mass shooting in 2009 that killed 13 people and wounded more than 30. However, Milley said that Fort Hood is so large that it is not feasible to conduct detailed searches of everyone who enters.

Lopez bought the semi-automatic handgun used in the attack a month earlier from a local store called Guns Galore. Nidal Hasan, the shooter in the 2009 rampage, also bought his FN 5.7 tactical pistol at Guns Galore.

Soldiers are not allowed to bring unregistered personal weapons on to the installation.

The nearby Scott & White Memorial Hospital said on Friday that it is continuing to treat four of the victims and that the most-seriously injured patients are showing signs of improvement. "One patient is in good condition and will most likely be discharged today. The three patients previously listed in critical condition have been upgraded to fair condition and are expected to remain in the hospital for the next several days. Five patients have been discharged from the hospital," it said in a statement.