PTSD on Trial:Suicidal Iraq veteran charged with attempted murder

Before you judge too quickly, this veteran's wife said he didn't try to kill her. She stopped him from trying to kill himself.

"If you catch this early, you stop a cycle of people who are self-medicating or acting out in a violent way," says Ron Crowder, a district court judge and retired major general from the National Guard who served in Vietnam.

Soldier's invisible war: Iraq vet charged with attempted murder
Story Highlights
Soldier accused of trying to kill wife, could face up to 15 years in jail

Wife says prosecutors have it all wrong -- her husband didn't try to kill her

Thomas Delgado's case may go before new veterans' court in Colorado

Wife says her husband was trying to commit suicide and she wrestled gun away

By Jim Spellman and Wayne Drash
CNN

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (CNN) -- Army Spc. Thomas Delgado saved lives as a combat medic on the front lines in Iraq, earning a Purple Heart when a bomb rocked his vehicle during his nearly yearlong tour. Back home, he was sometimes assigned the role of insurgent during combat training at a mock Iraqi village in California.

What really happened?

For the Delgados, the evening of September 24, 2008, just days after their fifth wedding anniversary, began with drinks and an argument. Then everything escalated with whirlwind speed.

Shayla Delgado says her husband grabbed a gun and rattled off suicidal thoughts. "I've been thinking about how I'm going to do it," she recalled him saying. "I just can't live like this any more. I can't do it, I can't do it."

"He was telling me, 'Take our son and leave because you don't want to be here for this,'" she said, breaking down in tears. "I was really, really scared."


She says she pleaded, begged him, to get on the phone with his father. The two spoke. The soldier kept telling his dad how much he loved him, she says. She rushed to the bedroom, cradling their sleeping year-old son, and sprinted out of the apartment.

She dropped the infant off at a neighbor's and returned home, heading straight to the bathroom where her husband was holed up. She kicked in the door. "I see him with the gun in his mouth and I just ripped the gun from his arms and I ran."

It was during that scuffle to wrestle the gun away, prosecutors say, that the soldier tried to kill his wife, breaking her nose and attempting to choke her. Prosecutors have charged Thomas Delgado with one count of first-degree attempted murder and an array of other charges. They have offered a plea bargain of 5 to 15 years in prison -- a deal Delgado has so far rejected.
read more here
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/08/06/accused.soldier.ptsd/