State trooper’s suicide a red flag for Brockton area veterans

State trooper’s suicide a red flag for Brockton area veterans
Trooper Gregory Jasinskas served in Iraq and Afghanistan
Enterprise News
By Maria Papadopoulos
Staff Writer
Posted Aug 02, 2013

WEST BRIDGEWATER
In May 2011, then-Army Sgt. 1st Class Gregory Jasinskas wrote to The Enterprise while serving in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Jasinskas, then a state trooper on his third deployment overseas, praised Osama bin Laden’s assassination after learning about the event while watching the Armed Forces Network.

“(I’m) very happy, very relieved we finally got this mass murderer. I see him in the same light as Hitler,” Jasinskas said in an email to The Enterprise at the time.

Jasinskas returned from Afghanistan last year, and went back to work as a state trooper – a job he held for the past eight years, working out of the Milton barracks.

Monday afternoon, Jasinskas, an Abington native, committed suicide while under investigation for an alleged sexual assault while on duty.

His suicide has local veterans agents questioning what led Jasinskas, a married 40-year-old and decorated war veteran and state trooper, to take his own life.

“Oh my God. A kid that goes to two tours of duties and then ends up like this?” said Walter Thayer, West Bridgewater’s veterans agent and a retired police officer.

Jasinskas’ death highlights an ongoing issue within the military community – the staggering number of suicides among veterans.

According to a February study by the Department of Veterans Affairs, 22 veterans commit suicide every day nationwide.
read more here