CODY - An active-duty sergeant in the U.S. Army had often threatened suicide in the days before killing his estranged wife and himself, according to witness statements in police reports.

The Lovell Police Department provided reports on its investigation of the Nov. 5 incident in which Sgt. Steven D. Lopez, 23, shot Brenda Lee Davila, 22, three times before turning the gun on himself outside Davila's Carmon Avenue residence.

Lovell Police Chief Nick Lewis declined to comment on the case.

The reports include accounts from those close to Lopez who say he was struggling with depression and had worried that he might kill Davila and himself.

Dispatch logs detail three phone calls to police over 11 days in October by Sgt. Clinton Ham, who was stationed with Lopez at Fort Bragg, N.C. Ham told police he had received text messages from Lopez stating that he was suicidal.

The Army's Criminal Investigation Division, an independent unit that investigates felony crimes involving Army personnel, is looking into the incident.

In mid-September, Davila left Fort Bragg, where the couple lived with their two young children. She returned to Lovell with the children, planning to seek a divorce, according to a police report.

It was a dispute over custody of the children that may have set Lopez off immediately before the incident, according to eyewitness accounts of the shooting.

Due for training

Lopez was due Oct. 18 at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., for basic noncommissioned officer training, a course required for promotion to the rank of staff sergeant. He never showed up, and returned later to Lovell instead.

Around Oct. 15, Lopez called Chelsea Wardell, a former girlfriend, and told her he was considering leaving the Army to return to Lovell, according to a statement Wardell gave Lewis on Nov. 7, two days after the shooting.

Wardell and Lopez were previously engaged, but after Lopez returned from a deployment to Afghanistan in 2003, they split. Lopez kept in touch with Wardell in the days before his death, speaking with her almost daily, she told Lewis.

On Oct. 19, the day the Army first listed Lopez as absent without leave, Ham contacted Lovell police enquiring if Lopez was in town. Ham called again on Oct. 20, asking police to help locate Lopez.

"I'm just trying to cover my ground to say, 'Hey, he's there with his wife, 'cause I know they got a little problem, or whatever the case may be,"' Ham said, according to a police log of the conversation.

Ham called again the afternoon of Oct. 29, requesting a welfare check of Lopez, who had sent text messages to Ham that he was suicidal. A log of that conversation between Ham and police was not available.

Later that afternoon, Lovell Police Officer Robert Bifano located Lopez, and met briefly with him at the police station.

Lewis states in a report that he "never received any information that Steven Lopez was to be arrested on charges of being AWOL." Lewis has said that Lopez was not listed as missing or wanted in a national crime database.

A subsequent check of the database by the FBI shows that Lopez was not entered in the system while AWOL, Lewis wrote in his report.

Because Lopez had not been missing for more than 30 days, he was listed as AWOL, but not classified as a deserter, a status assigned after a month.

The Army typically does not actively search for soldiers listed as AWOL or deserters, said Lt. Col. George Wright, a public affairs specialist at the Pentagon.

He said such soldiers could be arrested by local law enforcement and returned to military custody, but that an arrest often was dependent on a judgment call by local police.

Lewis said the day after the shooting that he was unaware of any meeting between Lovell police and Lopez. He later discussed with Bifano the Oct. 29 meeting.

"During our conversation about this incident, Officer Bifano told me that it appeared to him Steven Lopez was AWOL, but at the time of Officer Bifano's contact with Steven Lopez, he was not told to arrest and hold Steven Lopez for Sgt. Ham," Lewis wrote.

Saw counselor twice

Wardell told Lewis that she had urged Lopez to get mental health counseling while he was still at Fort Bragg. She said he met twice with a counselor while there, but quit going, and did not discuss his suicidal feelings with Army doctors.

"Steven told her that if he were to admit he was suicidal to the Army counselors, he would be treated like 'trash,"' Lewis wrote.

Lopez also struggled with anger he felt toward Davila, Wardell told Lewis.

She told Lewis that Lopez "wanted to come back to Lovell and try and work things out between he and Brenda, but was afraid that he would kill Brenda," the report states.

The report details Wardell's account of an incident around Oct. 27 when she visited Lopez at his sister's apartment, where he was staying.

Wardell saw a pistol on a couch and was concerned that Lopez would use it to kill himself, so she tried to take it. A confrontation followed, during which Lopez again threatened suicide, even holding the gun to his head, the report states.

Wardell took the gun and gave it to Daniel Lopez, Steven's father, who later returned it to his son, according to statements in the report by Wardell and Amy Lopez, Steven's sister.

Preliminary information indicates the gun belonged to Steven Lopez, according to police reports.

Wardell also described Lopez as "taking any and as many prescription drugs that he could find," including seven Xanax anti-anxiety pills and eight OxyContin narcotic pain pills on one day the week before the shooting.

Witnesses to the shooting described Lopez as acting drowsy, and a police report lists a plastic bag containing four pills that match the description for generic Xanax as being recovered from the scene.

Big Horn County Coroner Del Atwood said in a letter that the final autopsy report on the case, including toxicology results, is not yet complete.

It is unclear whether Lewis has concluded his investigation, stating in a letter to Lovell City Attorney Sandra Kitchen that "the final investigative report is included in this packet" of documents requested by the Gazette.

But the report provided by Lewis concludes: "The investigation is in its preliminary stage and is not complete. This is a draft report."