Combat PTSD on trial and so are we

Iraq war veteran sentenced in stabbing death of girlfriend, 22
LA Times
By Paresh Dave
December 19, 2013

An Iraq war veteran who blamed post-traumatic stress disorder for choking and stabbing his 22-year-old girlfriend to death was sentenced Thursday to 26 years to life in prison.

Allowed by his attorney to apologize for the first time since the January 2011 fight that led to the death of Eileen Garnreiter, the 25-year-old veteran, Tymarc Warren, told the court that he lost control.

“I am sorry,” Warren said over the audible cries of his father. “This one incident got out of control really fast.”

Warren served two tours of duty in Iraq with the U.S. Army. He testified in his own defense, saying Garnreiter had grabbed a knife in the kitchen of their Lawndale home during a dispute. She wanted to break up with him because of worries that Warren couldn’t provide for their 5-week-old daughter, Layla.
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Iraq War Vet Charged With Murder In Shooting Death Of Neighbor In Dispute Over Dog
CBS Detroit
December 19, 2013

NOVI (WWJ) - A 28-year-old Walled Lake man was arraigned Thursday on a charge of open murder and possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony in the death of his neighbor.

Charles Jacob Simkins — a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq — is accused of shooting 45-year-old Edwin Criswell in a dispute over a dog.

It happened Wednesday on the 1100-block of Sigma near Maple and Pontiac trail.

According to testimony in Novi District Court, Simkins had been looking for his dog when he was confronted by Criswell, who was upset that the dog was in his yard. An argument broke out, and — armed with a loaded handgun — Simkins allegedly punched his neighbor and then shot him.
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Fredericksburg standoff ends in gunfire
by KVUE News
Posted on December 19, 2013

FREDERICKSBURG, Texas -- A three-hour standoff in Fredericksburg ended in a shootout.

It started around 7 p.m. on Wednesday at the Valero Gas Station off South Adams Street.

Chief Steven Wetz with the Fredericksburg Police Department says Victor Antonio Valdez, 24, came in and brandished a weapon, telling two clerks to leave the store. The clerks called 911.

When officers arrived on the scene, they set up a perimeter around the store and tried to negotiate with Valdez.

"Over the store phone, we kept losing negotiations, and then he'd hang up the phone," Wetz said.
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Premature deaths of California and Texas veterans
Statesman
By Jeremy Schwartz
December 19, 2013

The Los Angeles Times this week investigated deaths of young veterans in that state, and found that as in Texas, recent vets have elevated risks of suicide compared to their civilian counterparts.

The Times investigation found veterans under 35 there are dying of suicide at a rate double their civilian counterparts. An American-Statesman investigation last year found similar results among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans from Texas who were receiving VA benefits when they died. The percentage of suicides was nearly five times higher than the overall state population, and among males under 35 the percentage of veterans who died from suicides was 1.6 times higher. Both investigations also found high numbers of deaths from motor vehicle crashes; in Texas single vehicle crashes killed an outsized number of young vets, and two-thirds of such crashes involved speeding or alcohol.

Such state-by-state examinations of veteran deaths are important because of the lack of national death information tracked or released by the Department of Veterans Affairs since the wars began.

After the Statesman published its investigation last year, VA officials said they planned to conduct a national cause-of-death study for Iraq/Afghanistan veterans. The massive effort began last year, but so far nothing has been released. That's largely left the job to journalists to investigate how veterans are dying after they come home.

There was one significant difference in what the California and Texas investigations found: While the Times found that the number of veterans who died of drug overdoses was about one-half of those who died of suicide, in Texas just as many veterans died of overdoses as of suicide.
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Those are the headlines from one day. Just one day and there were many, many more.

These stories are being repeated all over the country and they don't seem to matter enough that the national news covers them. They used to but that was a long time ago.

The article from the Statesman is very good but they forgot about a couple of other states with the same results.

"Oklahoma veterans and active-duty military personnel are killing themselves at twice the rate of civilians, despite increased efforts to address the problem."

"The rate of suicide among military veterans in Arizona is more than double the civilian rate. Advocates say veterans need more than benefits when returning from war. The average veteran suicide rate in Arizona from 2005 through 2011 is almost 43 deaths per 100,000 people. That’s according to data compiled by News21, a national reporting project based out of Arizona State University. And the rate should increase as more veterans return home." 

So what do we do about any of this? What do we owe them? How do they go from doing everything possible to survive combat but not being able to find anything to survive being home? How do they go from being willing to die for the sake of someone else to being charged with killing someone back home?

UPDATE out of New York

A Iraq War veteran charged with executing his girlfriend on Halloween will use the insanity defense.

Damien Zervos, 32, of Albany, who served as an Army National Guard infantryman from 2004 to 2005, said he used a rifle to kill 33-year-old Charee Akins-Maddox, a mother of four children, on Oct. 31 in a home at 156 Lark St., his attorney, Terence L. Kindlon, said.

Zervos shot the woman in the back of the head because of a psychiatric condition, Kindlon said.

He will use the defense that Zervos is not guilty by mental disease or defect, the technical term for the insanity defense, Kindlon said.