PTSD On Trial:Considering the Toll of War in a Death Penalty Debate

Considering the Toll of War in a Death Penalty Debate
Texas Tribune
by Brandi Grissom
Dec. 27, 2013

The car would not stop. Flares did not stop it. Shots fired into the engine didn't stop it. Exaggerated hand gestures and hollering surely didn't. As far as the four Marines stationed at a roadside checkpoint in Iraq knew, the sedan hurtling toward them was a bomb on wheels.

Tim Rojas flashed a thumbs-up at his fellow lance corporal, John Thuesen, 21, the quiet Texan manning the machine gun on the Humvee’s turret. Bullets ripped through the car. The driver slumped over the steering wheel as the sedan crawled to a stop.

There was no explosion. The Marines were alive, and in that moment, Rojas recalled, the four men felt like heroes.

Then, the car’s rear door opened, and a boy, covered in his family’s blood, terror all over his face, ran screaming toward them.

“It was a terrible feeling,” Rojas said, his eyes glassy with tears, recalling the day that he said forever changed their lives.
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