CBS4 Investigates: Standoff With A Soldier in Miami

CBS4 Investigates: Standoff With A Soldier
February 6, 2013
Michelle Gillen

MIAMI (CBSMiami) — “Sir. I am writing to you because I am in urgent need of preventing a crisis from occurring.”

It was an e-mail that stopped its reader in her tracks. An e-mail that made its way to a specialized Miami-Dade mental health program, the 11th Judicial Circuit Criminal Mental Health Project, created to interface counselors with police and the courts. The goal is to save lives and reduce the number of people with mental illness in the criminal justice system.

The e-mail arrived on the heels of the Sandy Hook tragedy in Connecticut and just days before December 21, 2012 – a date that some believed signaled the end of the world. In fact, a worried family member of a young Iraqi soldier wrote of her unsuccessful attempts to get the young soldier help. A man the family member said suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, Schizophrenia and more. She detailed that she believed the young soldier was going to kill himself and others and included a laundry list of weapons he allegedly he possessed, including shotguns, rifles and handguns.

“That’s when the second best of luck happened. We got a hero who came out who turned out to be an Iraqi vet himself.” said Leifman.

“He was in crisis and he truly believed that what he was doing was the right thing,” says Victor Milian. To the judge, a hero in this story.

Millian is not only a Miami-Dade Hostage negotiator, but also a veteran of the Iraqi war, a senior sergeant, and when he arrived at the soldier’s apartment complex he was determined to get the roubled soldier out alive, while trying to make sure that residents and his fellow officers were kept safe.
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