Ex-Marine who survived three tours in Iraq is slain while installing cable TV

Three tours in Iraq but this Marine was killed in his own home. How do we make sense out of this? How do we make sense out of what happened at Fort Hood? How do we make sense out of anything that happens to any of these men and women when they are supposed to be out of danger and safe back home?

Ex-Marine who survived three tours in Iraq is slain while installing cable TV in Victorville
November 10, 2009 4:23 pm
A former U.S. Marine who survived several tours of duty in Iraq and a knife attack at his Phelan home a few months ago was violently beaten to death with a hammer while installing cable at a Victorville home, authorities said. A relative of the homeowners has been arrested in the attack.

Trevor Neiman, 25, a Charter Communications Cable installer, was found beaten and bloody by San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies who responded to the home shortly after 4:30 p.m. Monday.

While Neiman was working on the cable at the home in the 15200 block of San Jose Drive, a man attacked and repeatedly beat him with a small hammer, authorities said.


"He was doing a cable installation. There was no exchange of words. There was nothing that occurred before the unprovoked attack," said Jody Miller, a San Bernardino County sheriff’s spokeswoman.

Miller said witnesses told investigators there was no indication of what set off the attack. Paramedics rushed Neiman to Victor Valley Community Hospital, where he died of his injuries.

After the attack, investigators say, the suspect fled the home.
read more here
Ex-Marine who survived three tours in Iraq is slain

We can't. We can't make sense out of anything people do to them any more than we can make sense out of what they do not do for them. We manage pretty well at saying slogans like "support the troops" and tomorrow as the day we honor our veterans is supposed to be foremost in our thoughts and prayers, the truth is, for the vast majority of the people in this country, it will just be another day like any other. For them, it will be a day to remember friends they lost and some they gained. It will also be a day of remembering how they were transformed from being a citizen into being a member of the armed forces. A minority in this country soon forgotten after their uniforms are taken off and their weapons turned in. They return to their families and friends, neighbors, all the people they once thought they knew well, suddenly finding out they can no longer talk to them the same way they did before.

They became veterans and it is a title they will carry for the rest of their lives. The same lives they risked for the sake of everyone else in the country. They same lives they laid on the line. The same lives we were willing to sacrifice for our own freedom, our own needs and our own prosperity.

With WWII it was all about revenge for the most part for Pearl Harbor. Then it was about stopping the communists from taking over South Korea. We then decided their lives were worth risking to stop the communists from taking over Vietnam. Again we decided to send them for the sake of Kuwait just as we sent them into Somalia and other nations with lesser numbers. We sent them into Afghanistan for retaliation of the attacks on that clear September morning in 2001 and then we sent them into Iraq for reasons we are still not clear about but the fact remains, they are still in Afghanistan and Iraq, still risking their lives and still coming home to an absent nation.

Trevor Neiman, 25 served three tours but aside from his family and friends, we will not really remember his name. The list of those we honored and remembered from Fort Hood today will soon be forgotten just as the numbers of the wounded will fade from memory. We will focus on the trial to come remembering the name of the Major who betrayed his soldiers and slaughtered them while they were unarmed. They had no way of defending themselves and Hasan took full advantage of this. We however manage to betray them as well when we do not really value them. We do not take care of them and accept substandard care for the wounded. We do not honor them when we make no plans ahead of time to take care of their needs and then find even more excuses for why the problems they have to face go on. When they become homeless we blame them instead of ourselves for not taking care of them and making sure they can make a living to pay their bills. We don't make sure their families stop living in a bubble and open their eyes to what wounds they may not be able to see and God forbid we manage to make sure communities are ready for the National Guards coming back into the community in any kind of need.

Tomorrow I hope to focus on what is being done for them but above all, focus on them even more than usual. Tomorrow is Veterans day but for them it is everyday they are a veteran and we need to remember this. Keep in mind with two campaigns going on, PTSD all over the news, you'd think the rest of us would care enough to stay informed, but we don't. That's really sad.