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Bypassed for a promotion and struggling to pay for his house, Robert Bales was eyeing a way out of his job at a Washington state military base months before he allegedly gunned down 16 civilians in an Afghan war zone, records and interviews showed as a deeper picture emerged of the US army sergeant's financial troubles and brushes with the law.

While Bales, 38, sat in an isolated cell at a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on Saturday, classmates and neighbors from Ohio remembered him as a "happy-go-lucky" school football player who took care of a special needs child and watched out for troublemakers in the neighborhood.

But court records and interviews show that the 10-year veteran - with a string of commendations for good conduct during four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan - had joined the army after a Florida investment job went sour, had a Seattle-area home condemned, struggled to make payments on another and failed to get a promotion or a transfer a year ago.

His legal troubles included charges that he assaulted a girlfriend and, in a hit-and run accident, ran bleeding in military clothes into the woods, court records show. He told police he fell asleep at the wheel and paid a fine to get the charges dismissed, the records show.

Military officials say that after drinking on a southern Afghanistan base, Bales crept away onMarch 11 to two slumbering villages overnight, shooting his victims and setting many of them on fire. Nine of the 16 killed were children and 11 belonged to one family.

Bales hasn't been charged yet with the shootings, which have endangered complicated relations between the United States and Afghanistan and threatened to up end US policy over the decade-old war.

But Bales' family troubles were hinted at by his wife, Kari, on multiple blogs posted with names like The Bales Family Adventures and Baby Bales. A year ago, she wrote that Bales was hoping for a promotion or a transfer after nine years stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside Tacoma, Washington.

After Bales lost out on a promotion to E7 - a first-class sergeant - the family hoped to go to Germany, Italy or Hawaii for an "adventure", she said. They hoped to move by last summer; instead the army redeployed his unit to Afghanistan.

It would be Bales' fourth tour in a war zone. He joined the military two months after 9/11 and spent more than three years in Iraq during three separate assignments since 2003. His attorney said he was injured twice in Iraq - once losing part of his foot.

Bales was struggling to keep payments on his own home in Lake Tapps, a rural community south of Seattle. His wife asked to put the house on the market three days before the shootings, real estate Philip Rodocker said.

Bales and his wife bought the Lake Tapps home in 2005, according to records, for $280,000. It was listed this week at $229,000. Overflowing boxes were piled on the front porch, and a US flag leaned against the siding.

（中國日報網英語點津 Helen 編輯）

About the broadcaster:

Emily Cheng is an editor at China Daily. She was born in Sydney, Australia and graduated from the University of Sydney with a degree in Media, English Literature and Politics. She has worked in the media industry since starting university and this is the third time she has settled abroad - she interned with a magazine in Hong Kong 2007 and studied at the University of Leeds in 2009.