HEWITT — The end of Spc. Armando G. Aguilar's life was ironic, and tragic, after a year of searching for hidden bombs in Iraq with Fort Hood's 87th Sapper Company.

A man often on the highway at home and in Iraq, he had driven the last 10 miles or so of his life last month when he again confronted a perceived enemy: a police officer who had been chasing him.

They faced each other at a service station just off Interstate 35 in Hewitt, the cop armed with a .45-caliber handgun, a video camera running in the patrol car.

“I observed a subject that was later identified as Armando Aguilar Jr. exit his truck and place a pistol to the side of his head,” Hewitt police officer Chad Kasting wrote in his report, citing the video he saw, “and then seconds later fire one shot point-blank to the side of his head and then fall to the ground.”

Aguilar's suicide is one of at least 15 for Fort Hood this year, breaking a post record. When he tumbled face-first to the ground next to a Valero gas pump, his life at an abrupt end, so too, was the promise that comes with youth.

At 26, he enjoyed music. After coming home from Iraq's deadly highways he was on the road once more, performing and thinking about going to school, but all was not well. As in many soldier suicides, he was grappling with mental problems and was seeking help.

“He was a ticking time bomb already,” said the soldier's father, Armando G. Aguilar Sr.

The Bay City priest who officiated at the soldier's funeral and talked of his musical gifts said one family member told him the medicine wasn't working as it was intended.

“He took it and it affected him in a different way. That's what I was told,” said Father Garry Cernoch, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Bay City, who didn't know Aguilar.

“He had plans for himself, and he was going to try to work on his music abilities,” Cernoch said, adding that the soldier planned to go to college.

Statistics released late last week for the year through August show the Army had recorded 196 confirmed or suspected suicides. Of those, 104 were active-duty soldiers; the rest in the Army Reserve and National Guard.

More than two-thirds of those deaths have been confirmed as suicides.

For Fort Hood, the toll has mounted despite the aggressive efforts of commanders to reduce soldier and family stress. So far this year, the post reports that it has confirmed 13 suicides. Three other deaths remain under investigation.

But statistics provided by the Army show there have been 15 suicides involving Fort Hood soldiers through last month, with one dying in the war zone. All the others killed themselves stateside.

Fort Hood recorded 11 suicides among its troops last year after posting 14 each in 2006, 2007 and 2008.

The San Antonio Express-News has found that in addition to the confirmed suicides listed by Fort Hood this year, at least two other soldiers have killed themselves.

One was Aguilar, 26, a Houston Parkview Baptist School graduate who records show at one time lived in San Antonio. He had family in Blessing, near Bay City, his birthplace.

Sgt. Delquan Robert Matthews, 23, of Brooklyn, N.Y., also committed suicide. Justice of the Peace Bill Cooke said he ruled that Matthews, who served in Iraq from June 2008 to June 2009, shot himself in the head at home in Killeen.

A third case involved a multidrug overdose that claimed the life of a 23-year-old mental health specialist, but it is unclear if a ruling has been issued. The justice of the peace handling that case did not return a phone call.

The Army last year recorded 163 suicides among active-duty troops, a record. The problem has vexed the Pentagon, which has launched mental health and suicide prevention programs and has established task forces in hopes of turning the tide. So far, though, little has changed. As in past years when suicides rose amid frequent deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, the vast majority of the victims are men, with the bulk of the soldiers coming from lower-enlisted ranks.

Last month, all but two of 23 troops committing suicide were men, and just two were officers. Ten were specialists.

Most dying by their own hand do so alone and in private, as Matthews did, but one GI this summer walked into a Subway restaurant in Killeen, went to a restroom and shot himself in the head.

Aguilar died in an incident that began early in the morning Aug. 21 in Bellmead, where he fired two shots into the ground during a domestic dispute.

Aguilar, whose death was ruled a suicide, joined the military nearly three years ago. He became a combat engineer after boot camp and had been assigned to the 87th Sapper Company, 8th Engineer Battalion, 36th Engineer Brigade.

In Iraq, he did one of the Army's most dangerous jobs: clearing bombs from roads with other troops in a route clearance team.

Sensing that he was depressed in a phone call from Iraq, his wife, Samantha, sent Aguilar's favorite guitar to the war zone, where he played for the troops.

But when he came home on midterm leave, “he was very jumpy. He was having nightmares about running in the field and being chased,” said his mother, Amelia Aguilar, 45.

His troubles might have begun after a battle buddy he went to basic training with committed suicide while in Iraq. A month or so before committing suicide, “Mondo,” as everybody called Aguilar, thought he was seeing shadows of the dead soldier. He twice tried to overdose and was hospitalized on both occasions, and he once was put on suicide watch after returning from Iraq.

Two weeks before his death, he began taking an antipsychotic medication.

Amelia Aguilar recalled her son saying “‘I'm going to be like this the rest of my life.'

“And I said ‘No, son, they're going to help you.'”

She added that the gun he used to take his own life was owned by a friend. He took the gun away from the friend after stopping him from committing suicide, she said.