Wife says Iraq War changed Nicholas Horner

Wife: Iraq changed Horner
March 24, 2012
By Phil Ray
The Altoona Mirror

HOLLIDAYSBURG - When Army Sgt. Nicholas A. Horner returned from his third tour in Iraq in the summer of 2008, he was no longer the "happy-go-lucky goofball" that his wife, Windy, had fallen in love with just a few years before.

Windy Horner testified Friday in a Blair County courtroom that Horner, 31, was "more antsy" and subject to mood changes. He was suicidal at times. He carried a handgun and avoided crowds. He, for instance, would not go to local stores.

Windy Horner was one of the opening witnesses for the defense in her husband's double-homicide trial. The prosecution is seeking the death penalty against Nicholas Horner for the shooting deaths of Scott Garlick, 19, and Raymond Williams, 64, during a 2009 robbery and getaway at the 58th Street Subway.

She filed for divorce in 2010. The petition is pending, Windy Horner said under cross-examination.

She said her husband would disappear for hours, citing two instances when the couple lived in Dixon, Mo., just 20 miles from his station at Fort Leonard Wood, in which he left home and later appeared at the house of a friend, Staff Sgt. Kevin Hall, a trainer at Fort Leonard Wood.

She remembered him leaving a barbeque with another family one night.

He said he was going for a cigarette but when she went outside to look for him, he was "taking off for the treeline."

Windy Horner said she let him go, knowing she couldn't catch him.
read more here