PTSD on Trial: Marine Veteran's Dad pleads for help for all veterans with PTSD

Richard Buendia was afraid when his son was risking his life in Iraq then breathed when he came home. He was afraid for his son again for the other deployments. He didn't think he had to be afraid for his son once back home and out of the military.

If you only read Wounded Times once in a while, you know how many times this has happened and you know that while they all serve this one country they come home to different states. It all depends on where they live how well or poorly they are treated. In a perfect world they would all receive the help they need to heal, but this is far from a perfect world.

We show up at parades. We show up for events. We show up for their homecomings and we show up for their funerals. Can we show up when they need us to help them for a change?

My son Matthew L. Buendia is a Former Marine Sgt. who served two tours in Iraq and one in Afganistan. He lost 23 friends in battle and his best child hood friend shortly after he came home. He was almost killed in his apt as a woman drove in with her car, while he slept on the couch. He also saved a woman from a violent attack in 2011 a month prior to the incident.

He has always been a passive young man, an honor student, and received citizen ship awards throughout school. He was never involved with the law. He came home from war with severe PTSD. From the time he came home, he began treatment at the VA. He had a good job and was rising to a great future, though he continually had problems with PTSD, the 17 medications he was on, and severe flashbacks. There were several times over the year he would black out with no memory of what he had done or where he had been.

Then on Sept. 30, 2011 while having flashbacks he shot and wounded an officer in Tampa Fl. PTDS "triggers" had started the events of that night. Today he sits in solitary Confinement with no treatment for his Illiness. He faces life in prison.

You have a chance to help Matthew and other returnning Veterans with PTSD.
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Former Marine who shot deputy tormented, his ex says
Tampa Bay Times
Jessica Vander Velde
Times Staff Writer
Sunday, December 8, 2013

TAMPA — Matthew Buendia was a trained U.S. Marine Corps sniper. If he had wanted to kill the Hillsborough sheriff's deputy he shot at, he could have, his ex-girlfriend recently testified.

Jessica Gipson figured he was trying to commit suicide. She says that just before Buendia fired more than a dozen times at Hillsborough Deputy Lyonelle De Veaux on Sept. 30, 2011, he swallowed a handful of pills.

Gipson saw Buendia draw his gun and fire at close-range. Maybe the 24-year-old man wanted the deputy to shoot back, she thought.

"At this point, I don't know what his intentions were," Gipson testified three weeks ago.

Gipson's recent testimony provides new details about the troubled ex-Marine, who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and at one point was taking 17 pills a day prescribed by U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs doctors.
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