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 morning he allegedly shot dozens of soldiers.
Surveillance video from the store obtained by CNN shows a man who, according to the
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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.
"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."
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