Soldier's 'Courageous Act' Remembered as Fort Hood Begins Healing
Fort Hood Public Affairs Office via Reuters
In
a final heroic act, Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Ferguson threw his body
against the entryway of a door as a fellow soldier-turned-gunman blasted
away in a terrifying rampage at Fort Hood.
Ferguson, 39, was fatally hit in the moment he became a human shield — a sacrifice remembered in a news conference Saturday.
Ferguson's
“courageous act of blocking the door with his own body prevented
further bloodshed,” said Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas.
Also
killed in Wednesday's shooting were Sgt. Timothy Owens, 37, and Staff
Sgt. Carlos Lazaney-Rodriguez, 38. Sixteen others were wounded. Gunman
Spc. Ivan Lopez died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials
said.
Rep. Williams, along with
Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, met some of the wounded soldiers Saturday,
and commended them on their valor. Among the victims was Maj. Patrick Miller, who was shot in the stomach with Lopez's .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol.
Miller had called 911 as he tended to his own wounds.
.....
Slain Fort Hood counselor found his calling in Army
Courtesy of Mary Muntean - Timothy Wayne Owens, with his mother, Mary Muntean, at his wedding in August 2013.
So, it was no surprise to residents in his home town of Effingham, Ill., to hear that Owens lost his life trying to calm the shooter in Wednesday’s Fort Hood killings.
Muntean said she received a call at her Effingham home from her son’s wife, Billy Owens, on Wednesday evening telling her that he had been shot five times after trying to calm Lopez in a post parking lot. Military officials have not released the names of those killed or injured or confirmed reports of how the violence unfolded. But friends of Owens said the account provided by his family fits the man they knew.
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The
names of the victims of the shooting in Fort Hood began to come out on
Thursday, released by relatives and by officials offering their
condolences.
In
Effingham, Ill., family members told The Associated Press that Army
Sgt. Timothy Owens was one of the three soldiers killed Wednesday in a
mass shooting by Specialist Ivan Antonio Lopez. Sixteen others were
wounded in the shooting. The Army has not released a list of the
victims, pending notification of relatives.
The
mother of Sergeant Owens, Mary Muntean, 77, of Effingham, told The
Associated Press that she had learned of her son’s death in a telephone
call with her daughter-in-law.
Unable
to reach her son, she called his wife, Billie Owens, who first said he
was in the hospital. Before long, Sergeant Owens’s wife called back, and
Mrs. Muntean had her worst fears confirmed. “She said, ‘Mom, I want to
tell you how sorry I am. Tim’s gone,' ” Mrs. Muntean said, according to
The A.P. “I broke down.”
Sergeant
Owens dropped out of high school in 1995. But his mother said he earned
his high school equivalency after joining the Army in 2004.
A
friend and former roommate, Paul Eatherton, said Sergeant Owens, whose
family moved back to Effingham from Missouri in the mid-1990s, worked at
Pizza Hut and studied tae kwon do at a local gym. Mr. Eatherton, a
martial arts instructor at the time, said Sergeant Owens got his black
belt and started teaching at a gym in Effingham.
“He
was the best student I’d ever seen or known,” Mr. Eatherton said. “We’d
go to tournaments, and he’d bring first places home every time.”
He
said Sergeant Owens, who was in his mid-30s, had recently signed up for
another six years in the Army. “I think he was going to be a lifer,” he
said. He said he had not talked to Sergeant Owens for several months,
but when he heard news of the shooting, he texted him immediately. He
got no reply. “That really worried me,” he said.
The
commander of Fort Hood, Lt. Gen. Mark A. Milley, said in an afternoon
news conference, that nine of the 16 people wounded in the attack were
taken to Scott & White Memorial Hospital in nearby Temple, Tex., for
treatment. Three were upgraded to serious condition on Thursday.
Hospital officials said doctors had operated on two patients, a man and a
woman, who had been shot in the abdomen and neck. The third person had
an abdominal wound. The other victims taken there were discharged.
.....
Specialist
Ivan Antonio Lopez had seen a military psychiatrist as recently as last
month. He was being treated for depression and anxiety, and had been
prescribed Ambien to help him sleep. He had come back from a four-month
deployment to Iraq in 2011 and told superiors he had suffered a
traumatic head injury there. But military officials said he had never
seen combat, and there was no record of any combat-related injury. He
was being evaluated for possible post-traumatic stress disorder.
Still,
military officials said, they had seen nothing to indicate that
Specialist Lopez, 34 — who killed three people and himself and wounded
16 others on Wednesday in a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Tex. — was
violent or suicidal.
“He
had a clean record,” Secretary of the Army John McHugh said Thursday
morning in testimony before a Senate panel in Washington. “No
outstanding bad marks for any kinds of major misbehaviors that we’re yet
aware of.”
Lt.
Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Fort Hood commander, said Thursday at a news
conference that there were “very strong indications” that there had been
a “verbal altercation” between Specialist Lopez and one or more other
soldiers in the minutes before the shooting started, but the authorities
were still investigating what role, if any, that played in the attack.
“We
have very strong evidence looking into his medical history that
indicated an unstable psychiatric condition,” General Milley said.
Friends
from his hometown in Puerto Rico said that Specialist Lopez was angry
with the Army when he returned home for his mother’s funeral in
November. Ismael Gonzalez, a former schoolmate who had kept in contact
with Specialist Lopez on Facebook, said the soldier was very upset that
he had initially been given only 24 hours to attend the funeral.
In
addition, Mr. Gonzalez said, Specialist Lopez, who was earning $28,000 a
year, told him that he was “in a precarious economic situation” trying
to support his family in Texas and two children in Puerto Rico from his
first marriage. And he was angry that the Army would not allow him to
move his family onto the base at Fort Hood, Mr. Gonzalez said.
None of this had found its way into Specialist Lopez’s official record, though.
“This
was an experienced soldier,” said Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the Army’s
chief of staff. “He spent actually nine years in the Puerto Rico
National Guard before coming on active duty, so he’s a very experienced
soldier.”
Those
who knew Specialist Lopez as a young man, obsessed with the high school
band, were even more stunned to learn what he was suspected of doing.
“I
cannot believe you are speaking about the same guy,” said Sgt. Maj.
Nelson Bigas, one of Specialist Lopez’s superiors in the National Guard.
“He was the most responsible, obedient, humble person, and one of the
most skillful guys on the line.”
For
a year beginning in 2006, Specialist Lopez was deployed with his guard
unit on the Sinai Peninsula, watching the border between Egypt and the
Gaza Strip.
But,
the authorities say, it was Specialist Lopez who went into Guns Galore
in Killeen, Tex., near Fort Hood on March 1 and bought the .45-caliber
Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol that was used in the shootings
on Wednesday.
It
was the same gun store where Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army major, had
bought at least one of the weapons used in a 2009 mass shooting on the
base.
So
information was emerging slowly on Thursday about Mr. Lopez. He was
raised in the small fishing village of Guayanilla on the southern coast
of Puerto Rico, about an hour and a half from San Juan. While there, he
attended the School of Asunción Rodríguez de Sala, where he was active
in the band and an enthusiastic drummer.
In
1999, he joined the National Guard, where he also played in the band.
Later, he joined the Puerto Rico Police Department and became a member
of its band. Officials said his record with the force was clean, with no
disciplinary or behavioral problems.
His
main job for the police was visiting schools and hospitals around
Puerto Rico to give demonstrations on his percussion instruments. After
he finished, other police officers would speak to the students or
patients about gun violence, drugs and bullying, said Jeann Correa, the
director of the unit for which he worked. His pay was $2,400 a month.
In
2010, getting a special leave from the police force, he shifted into
the Army as a private first class and was quickly promoted to specialist
and stationed with the First Armored Division at Fort Bliss in El Paso,
Tex. He was an infantryman there but his military record shows that in
November, because of a medical condition identified as plantar
fasciitis, a painful foot ailment, he moved to Fort Leonard Wood in
Missouri, where he trained to become a truck driver. In February, he was
posted to Fort Hood in that capacity.
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Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen, center, was sworn into the
presidency on Nov. 17, 2013. Photo by Maldivian government (press
release).
