When the war followed Tyler Armacost home

Veteran's family aims to help others with PTSD
By STEVE GARBACZ
Daily Journal
May 18, 2013

FRANKLIN, Ind. (AP) — The sight of an old van parked on the street sent the soldier's mind back to Iraq.

Tyler Armacost darted off the front porch of his parents' house and into the street because he thought he saw an Iraqi insurgent in the van. His mother tried to shake him and tell him no one was there, but he looked right through her as if she weren't there.

Scott and Karen Armacost searched for their son after he ran off into their Franklin neighborhood but couldn't find him. Later that night, they found him curled up in a ball and sleeping behind the shed in their backyard.

The memory brings Karen Armacost to tears. She knew he was struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder following the war but never saw him behave that way before, she told the Daily Journal (http://bit.ly/15FoB2I ).

After serving 16 months in Iraq, killing insurgents and seeing fellow soldiers die, the high school athlete who wasn't afraid to hug his parents and tell them he loved them was gone. When he came home from war, he had a hard time even looking them in the eye.

Tyler Armacost wouldn't sit with his back to a door, always on the watch for the enemy. Some nights he would wake his parents after having graphic nightmares. The medications for his back and knees, which he injured in combat, and the anxiety and fear he felt every day sometimes made him groggy and sluggish.

And when Tyler Armacost was killed in a car accident in March, his parents know that the stress of his military past and the medication he was taking to help him try to cope likely were factors in the fatal wreck.
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