Hero veteran Danny Ferguson died while saving comrades from Fort Hood ...

He died as heroically as any soldier on a battlefield.

Sgt. First Class Danny Ferguson, just back from Afghanistan, saved the lives of his Fort Hood colleagues by keeping gunman Ivan Lopez from entering a room filled with soldiers, his fiancee said.

Ferguson 'held that door, because it wouldn't lock,' Kristen Haley told WTSP-TV in Florida. 'If he wasn't the one standing there holding those doors closed, that shooter would have been able to get through and shoot everyone else.'

Haley's story of self-sacrifice was one of the few details to emerge from Wednesday afternoon's carnage, where Lopez killed three colleagues and wounded 16 more before killing himself.

'It's just horrific,' said Haley's dad, who answered the door Friday at the couple's single-story home in Killeen, Texas. 'It's not real.'

Kristen Haley emerged a short time later without speaking to reporters. A neighbor whose husband is also a Fort Hood soldier came over to offer a hug and a few words of condolence.

Other neighbors remembered Ferguson as friendly, funny and fearless.

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'The way he went fits him perfectly,' said Daniel Flores, 52, a local firefighter. 'He would put himself in the way to protect others. He would do something to save lives.

'That was the kind of guy he was.'

Neighbor Christina Morton, another Fort Hood wife, said her kids were constantly asking to play with the Army veteran.

'And he didn't even have kids,' said Morton, 34. 'He was just such a good person.'

A heroic base chaplain also helped spare soldiers from the lethal shooting spree, and Lopez, 34, turned his Smith & Wesson pistol on himself when confronted by an MP stationed at Fort Hood.

Haley is a soldier also stationed at Fort Hood, and told the television station that she was nearby when the gunfire erupted.

Ferguson had just returned from a stint in Afghanistan shortly before his slaying, she said.

A family member visiting one of the still-hospitalized wounded soldiers said one of the victims told him that Lopez exploded and opened fire after a fight with two fellow soldiers.

'It was an inside inside argument with him and a couple soldiers and it escalated into what turned out to be a shooting,' the man said. 'That's all it was.'

Authorities said there was probably a verbal beef between Lopez and other soldiers on the base before the shooting started.

But they believe the motive was tied instead to Lopez's history of mental problems.

The other two victims were identified earlier as Sgt. Timothy Owens, 37, of Illinois, and Carlos Lazaney, 38, a native of Puerto Rico - just like his killer Lopez.

lmcshane@nydailynews.com