Decorated Marine one day, in jail another

How War Ravages the Warrior
Reported by: Sean Carroll
Email: scarroll@13wham.com
Last Update: 11/20 9:28 pm

(Caledonia, N.Y. /Iraq) - The decorated Marine served two tours of duty in Iraq. He was in the Marines for 13 years. After Iraq, he returned home and served two years in prison--for a home-invasion assault he committed in Virginia.

"I'm here to defend my country and take part in a war on terrorism and then, unfortunately, I go and terrorize an American couple in their own home," Gianforte said.

Gianforte still says, as he did from the get-go, that he does not recall one moment of that attack.

"If I can do anything to keep someone else from having to go through this, than so be it," he said.

"Let me go through the hell so you don't have to."

Sergeant Gianforte's hell began in Fallujah with house-to-house combat searching for insurgents.

"Five weeks, inside a city, everyday you're in fire-fights, everyday you're losing friends…it's watching 13 of your friends get killed," he said.

With two tours under his belt, Caledonia's marine found himself at a Virginia Beach base training for a third deployment.

One night he hit the town with his buddies, drank a bit, then, with another Marine, bashed in the door of Dan and Debbie Shain’s home.

"They were accusing him of being a terrorist and that he killed people, and that they were going to kill him and his family," said Debbie Malone-Shain.

After a SWAT team pulled Gianforte off Dan Shain's beaten body, the decorated marine found himself in jail.
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