Count the father of Fort Hood shooter Ivan Lopez among those baffled by this week's deadly rampage. "My son must not have been in his right mind," said Ivan Lopez Sr. in a family statement in Puerto Rico, reports USA Today. "He wasn't like that." The elder Lopez also asked people to pray for the victims. Investigators, meanwhile, have not shed much more light today on what might have set off the 34-year-old soldier, with the investigation continuing into a possible argument just prior to the shooting. The New York Times reports that Lopez's superiors had recently denied his request for a leave, and he met with Fort Hood officials the afternoon of the shooting to discuss it. Afterward, he was "clearly agitated and disrespectful," a source tells the newspaper. (It's not clear why Lopez wanted the leave, or whether it was related to his mother's death in November.)
The Times also quotes Lopez's own Facebook post from March 1, the day he bought the gun used in the shooting. “My spiritual peace has all gone away, I am full of hate, I believe now the devil is taking me," he wrote in Spanish. Lopez also said he had been robbed the previous night by "2 flacos," which the newspaper says might be a reference to drug users. As the investigation unfolds, the shooting has raised anew a push to allow soldiers on base to carry loaded firearms, reports the Christian Science Monitor. They currently need special permission to do so. (More Ivan Lopez stories.)
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