Benjamin Colton Barnes, discharged from Joint Base Lewis-McChord with PTSD

Did the military knowingly discharge a troubled veteran into the community instead of helping him? Isn't that what they've been doing all along? Some come home and commit suicide. Others come home and snap. Most come home and do the best they can with what they have to recover from where they've been. We don't read their stories in the national news because they don't cause any trouble at all. We also don't see how much they are hurting. They are just like the rest of us when it comes to their personality and character. Predicting the outcome of sending men and women into combat is something the military should have been prepared for but they thought they found the answer in the twisted "training" telling them they can train their brains to be tough enough and resilient. All this time, all this money and the outcomes are far from good.

Suspect in ranger's slaying found dead in creek
Benjamin Colton Barnes, sought in a massive manhunt in Mount Rainier National Park, apparently died from exposure barely a mile from where he had fled into the woods a day earlier.
By Seattle Times staff
Driven relentlessly through chest-deep snow by his pursuers and unprepared for bitter, freezing temperatures, the suspect in the Sunday slaying of a Mount Rainier National Park ranger died cold and wet overnight — lying half-submerged in Paradise Creek and wearing one tennis shoe, a T-shirt and jeans, barely one mile from where he had fled into the woods.

Indications are that Benjamin Colton Barnes, 24, died from exposure. His body showed no sign of injuries, and he was carrying a handgun, a magazine of ammunition and a knife, said Sgt. Ed Troyer of the Pierce County Sheriff's Department.

"The manhunt has been concluded," announced Steven Dean, FBI assistant special agent in charge, at a news conference outside the park's main gate Monday afternoon.

The FBI recovered another ammunition magazine near Barnes' body, and the sheriff's Swiftwater Rescue Team found an assault-style rifle about 50 yards upstream.

Officials said Barnes had left survival gear in his car, which he fled after firing on rangers Sunday.

Killed was 34-year-old Ranger Margaret Anderson, the mother of two young children, who was gunned down after she had set a roadblock to stop a car being pursued after failing to stop at a chain-up checkpoint. A cruiser being driven by Ranger Dan Camiccia, who was in pursuit of Barnes, also was peppered with gunfire as it approached. Camiccia was not injured.

A Pierce County SWAT unit, sent to render aid to Anderson, also came under fire, according to law-enforcement officers, delaying efforts to reach the injured park ranger. Officials say Anderson was shot while still in her vehicle and never had a chance to return fire.

What Anderson and the others couldn't have known Sunday when they attempted to stop Barnes' blue Pontiac was that he apparently had been involved in a shootout eight hours earlier at a Skyway home where four people were injured, two critically. King County sheriff's Sgt. Cindi West said Barnes and several other armed individuals were having a "show and tell" with their guns when an argument devolved into a gunfight.

The Army confirmed Monday that Barnes had been a private first class whose military service ended in the fall of 2009. He received a misconduct discharge at Fort Lewis (now Joint Base Lewis-McChord) after he was charged with DUI and improper transport of a privately owned weapon. By then, he had served two years and seven months of active duty, according to Army Human Resources Command information cited by Maj. Chris Ophardt, a spokesman for Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

Lewis-McChord connection

The slaying of a Mount Rainier National Park ranger is the latest in a series of high-profile crimes linked to soldiers or veterans who recently served at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Others implicated in or convicted of serious crimes:
Pfc. Dakota Wolf, 19, is charged in the stabbing death of Scarlett Paxton, 19, in Kirkland on Nov. 30 while Wolf was AWOL. He has been in the Army less than a year and never deployed abroad.

Sgt. David Stewart, 38, an active-duty Army medic, led law-enforcement officers on a high-speed chase down Interstate 5 in April. Stewart killed himself and his wife, who was found in the car dead of a gunshot wound. Their 5-year-old son also was found dead in the family's home.

Ivette Gonzalez Davis, then a 24-year-old Army specialist, was sentenced to life in prison in August 2010 for shooting two fellow soldiers and kidnapping their baby.

Sgt. Sheldon Plummer, an active-duty soldier, pleaded guilty to strangling his wife in February 2010 in their Thurston County home. He received a 14-year sentence.

Hal Bernton,

Seattle Times staff reporter
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Slain ranger was living her dream
When Margaret Anderson was killed Sunday at Mount Rainier, she and her husband were living their dream, finally working as park rangers in the same national park while raising a young family.
By Steve Miletich
Seattle Times staff reporter
Margaret Anderson and her husband, Eric, were living their dream, finally working as U.S. park rangers in the same national park while raising a young family, their relatives said Sunday.

"They had been looking for that for a long time, to be in the same park," Margaret Anderson's father, the Rev. Paul Kritsch, said in a telephone interview.

Kritsch, a Lutheran minister in Scotch Plains, N.J., recalled his 34-year-old daughter's life, hours after she was fatally shot while working at her law-enforcement job in Mount Rainier National Park.

"As you can well imagine, it doesn't seem real," he said of her death.

Margaret and Eric Anderson worked at Mount Rainier for about four years after meeting at a national park in Utah and then moving about the country early in their careers.

The couple's older daughter, Anna, will turn 4 on Feb. 14, Kritsch said. The younger, Katie, will turn 2 in May.
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Massive manhunt for Iraq veteran after Park Ranger gunned down Monday, January 2, 2012