Veteran Wendy Torrey's death shocks family, friends and fellow veterans

Wendy Torrey didn't find what she was looking for trying to heal from what she had been through. She tried to find it. She had been in a treatment program before she walked into a shooting range and pulled the trigger against her own body. Torrey, by all accounts, not only want to heal herself, she wanted others to heal too. So what was missing from her "treatment" and what is it that they are still not doing when veterans like her do everything experts tell them they need to do but still end up so hopeless they don't want to live another day with the pain they are in? We have plenty of excuses when they just decide they don't want help, choose to drink or do drugs instead of fighting to heal or turn down help from others instead of embracing all the help they can get, but when they do all the can to heal but still take their own lives, we better start looking at what they are given in the form of help and fix what we're getting wrong.

Woman’s death shocks family, friends, fellow vets
Barb Ickes
Posted: Sunday, May 1, 2011

When Wendy Torrey followed her boyfriend to Bettendorf five years ago, she threw herself into what mattered to her: other veterans.

At 33 years old, Torrey had served in Bosnia with the Army, had lost her husband to an SUV rollover accident and was single-handedly raising the couple’s son, Trevor.

She found her way to VFW Post 9128 in Bettendorf shortly after moving to the Quad-Cities and served for two years as the post’s chaplain. She enrolled in Western Illinois University and earned a bachelor’s degree in business management.

She helped other veterans while volunteering for about six months as an intern for U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa. She also found work with the Veterans Administration hospital system in Iowa City.

But Torrey needed help, too.

“She served in the Bosnia campaign,” said Scott County Veterans Affairs Director David Woods. “We knew she had PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and she was being treated for it.”

In fact, Torrey had recently completed a treatment program at the Battle Creek Veterans Affairs Medical Center when she went to a shooting range April 20 in Taylor, Mich.

After renting a handgun and shooting targets for an unspecified amount of time, Torrey took her own life.

“We’re just dumfounded, because we didn’t see it coming,” said her father, John Torrey of Corpus Christi, Texas. “She didn’t tell us much about Bosnia. Veterans hide those things from people they care about.”

According to her obituary, Torrey enlisted in the Army in 1997, which is where she met her husband, Jeremy. She served with the military police in Bosnia.

“Her platoon asked her to man their M-60 machine gun, and she walked point on foot patrols, seeing things young women are not supposed to see,” her obit read.

Word of her suicide reached Bettendorf last week.
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Woman’s death shocks family, friends, fellow vets

Original report
Female Army Vet, released from PTSD program, committed suicide at shooting range