Hassan said goodbye to neighbour before shooting

Killeen: About 9am last Thursday, Major Nidal Malek Hassan walked over to see a neighbour in his ageing apartment building here on the edge of downtown. He had come to say goodbye.

The two occasionally would sit together in plastic chairs beneath a wind chime on the landing outside her second-floor apartment, she recalled.

She was Christian and he was Muslim, but they shared coffee and talked about God. But that morning, Hassan said that he would be deploying to Afghanistan soon and that he did not want to go. He gave her a copy of the Quran.

"I'm going to do good work for God," he told her.

Then he walked downstairs, through the grassy courtyard, stepped into his silver Honda Civic and drove to Fort Hood.

Four hours later, he allegedly opened fire in the Soldier Readiness Centre in a rampage that killed 13 people and wounded 38, the deadliest shooting till date on a US military installation.

Hassan, an Army psychiatrist, had moved into the 27-unit Casa del Norte apartments in late July when he was transferred to Ford Hood from Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in the District.

During his nearly four-month stay in apartment No 9, Hassan made few friends. Most of the other tenants referred to him as "Number Nine".

They said he often left his one-bedroom apartment at 5 or 6 in the morning, dressed in his uniform. Hassan usually did not return home until 6 or 7pm.

Some nights as he came home, neighbours would be gathered around a picnic table in the courtyard drinking.

As he climbed the steps to his apartment, they would snicker at him, said the woman.