(Nov. 6) -- An owner of a 7-Eleven convenience store in Fort Hood, Texas, said Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan came in for coffee and hashbrowns most mornings, including the day he allegedly shot dozens of soldiers.
Surveillance video from the store obtained by CNN shows a man who, according to the store owner, is Hasan at the cashier's counter at about 6:20 a.m. Thursday (7:20 a.m. ET) -- about seven hours before the mass shooting -- carrying a beverage and dressed in traditional Arab garb.
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"He looked normal, came in had his hashbrowns and coffee as you see in the surveillance video," the owner told CNN.
Another surveillance video from the store on Tuesday showed the man believed to be Hasan in scrubs.
While the owner said he was too busy to chat with Hasan whom he knows as "Major Nidal" on Thursday, he said that through his brief talks with Hasan he learned the officer's background was Jordanian, though he didn't speak Arabic well. He added that Hasan didn't wear a wedding ring and joked several times on whether the owner knew a bride for him.
Hasan would also ask the owner whether he planned to attend Friday prayers, a mainstay of Islam, to which the owner would say that he was too busy.
Since 2001, Hasan had been telling his family that he wanted to get out of the military but was unsuccessful, said a spokeswoman for his cousin, Nader Hasan. The Army officer told his family that he had been taunted after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the spokeswoman said.
"He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy," his cousin told the New York Times. "He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there."
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, who had been briefed by a general at the post, told CNN that Hasan was to have been deployed to Iraq and was unhappy about it.
Staff Sgt. Marc Molano, currently based at Fort Knox, Kentucky, told CNN that he was treated by Hasan for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) while at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington earlier this year.
"Dr. Hasan provided me with nothing but the best care," Molano said. "He was a very well-mannered, polite psychiatrist, and it's just a shock to know that Dr. Hasan could have done this. It's still kind of hard to believe."
Molano described him as "far and away one of the best psychiatrists I ever dealt with."
A soldier who served two tours in Iraq and is awaiting medical retirement for chronic PTSD and severe mental disorders called Hasan "a soldier's soldier who cared about our mental health."
But, he added, "Hasan hears nothing but these horror stories from soldiers who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan -- just hearing it I'm pretty sure would have a profound effect."
Mindy B. Mechanic, an associate professor of psychology at California State University, Fullerton, said listening to horror stories can indeed have an impact, but was unlikely to have such an extreme one.
The impact on therapists who work with traumatized individuals is known as vicarious traumatization or compassion fatigue, she said. "But they don't go out on shooting sprees," she said. "They might get depressed or have some emotional fallout from it, but to go on a shooting spree is not part of what happens to people from having to deal with trauma survivors all the time."
Mechanic, who did not know Hasan, said people don't just snap. "When you start looking back, there are crumbs that suggest everything was not hunky-dory."
A former neighbor of Hasan said he lived in a high-rise apartment complex in Silver Spring, Maryland, with another man, apparently his brother, and that the two appeared friendly.
"They had some Arabic signs out there, and I asked them what they meant," said the woman, who asked not to be identified. The other man, who routinely wore a chef's outfit, told her it was a prayer, she said. "They seemed like they were nice people," she said.
The two men moved out three or four months ago, which she noticed because the Muslim prayer had been removed from their door.
"Honestly, they seemed like very cool, calm guys, and religious guys," she said. "It's kinda strange."
According to military records, Hasan was born in Virginia, and a federal official said he was a U.S. citizen of Jordanian descent.
Military records show Hasan receiving his appointment to the Army as a first lieutenant in June 1997 after graduating from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, with a degree in biochemistry.
Six years later, he graduated from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences' F. Edward Hebert School Of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, and was first an intern, then a resident and finally a fellow at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Promoted to captain in 2003, he was promoted to major in May.
In 2009, Hasan he completed a fellowship in disaster and preventive psychiatry and was assigned to Darnall in July.
He had been awarded the National Defense Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Army Service Ribbon, but was never deployed outside the United States.
