Protecting veterans: Officials explore treatment court

Protecting veterans: Officials explore treatment court
By ANNE JUNGEN ajungen@lacrossetribune.com

His uncharacteristic behavior started with personal isolation that soon escalated to drunken driving and armed robbery.

Post-traumatic stress disorder after a tour in Iraq in late 2004 had festered inside the young war veteran, undiagnosed, his family unaware.
“We had no idea at that time what PTSD even was,” said the soldier’s Coon Valley father, who asked to remain anonymous.

His son, a former U.S. Army Calvary Scout, eventually was admitted to the Tomah VA Hospital and returned home in January 2006.

So did his PTSD.

Kitchen knives and aluminum foil began to vanish. He reeked of crack or methamphetamine.

“He looked terrible. He wouldn’t talk,” his father said. “That’s when I thought I would find him dead.”

He left home and stopped reporting to his probation officer. His mother immediately thought of him when she heard about a 2008 armed robbery at a North Side La Crosse tavern.

“I never thought in a million years I would do something like this,” the soldier later would tell the judge at sentencing.
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Protecting veterans: Officials explore treatment court