Accused JBLM shooter had a brain injury

The Joint Base Lewis-McChord Army staff sergeant, who’s accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians, had a traumatic brain injury and had seen a lot of combat during three deployments to Iraq.

Investigators say the 38-year-old soldier, with 11 years in the Army, is not talking. His name also hasn’t been released.

They believe he put on night-vision goggles, left the base in the middle of the night, and walked a mile to the local village. They say he broke into houses, gunning down anyone inside. That included women and children.

The first village was more than a mile south of the base. While there, he allegedly killed four people in the first house. In the second house, he allegedly killed 11 family members. He then walked back to another village past his base where he allegedly killed one more person. All of the victims were shot in their homes.

After the shooting spree, it’s believed the soldier returned to the base on his own and calmly turned himself in.

The soldier reportedly suffered a mild traumatic brain injury in the past, according to ABC news sources, either from hitting his head on the hatch of a vehicle or in a car accident. He went through the advanced treatment at Fort Lewis and was deemed “fit for combat duty” when he was deployed to Afghanistan in December. He had no behavioral issues, but investigators are now looking into whether he suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

ABC news is also reporting, when the soldier returned from his last deployment in Iraq he had difficulty reintegrating and had marital problems.

The solider has a wife and two children. They have been moved to JBLM for their own protection.

We’ve learned in 2008, he underwent the necessary screening to become a sniper. The Associated Press in Seattle has learned the soldier was with the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.

The 3rd Stryker Brigade was the Army’s first brigade to use the eight-wheeled, light infantry vehicle for which it is named, a vehicle developed in an effort to make the Army more nimble in a post-Cold War era.

The brigade deployed three times to Iraq before sending 2,500 soldiers to Afghanistan for the first time last December. For this most recent deployment, it left its 300 Stryker vehicles at home and, instead, has been using vehicles that were already in Afghanistan and are more resistant to roadside bombs.

The soldier is not from the same brigade as four service members based at Lewis-McChord who were convicted in the deliberate killing of three Afghan civilians during patrols in 2010. Those soldiers were from the 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, which has since been renamed the 2nd Stryker brigade.

An Afghan soldier mans a guard tower at a military base as civilians gather outside in Panjwai, Kandahar province, south of Kabul, Afghanistan where a Joint Base Lewis-McChord solider is accused of killing 16 people, including nine children and three women. AP photo/Allauddin Khan

AP reporter Gene Johnson contributed to this report

Related: Veterans group calls JBLM a “rogue base.”