Day From Hell For Iraq Veteran Didn't End

Veteran kept his cool in crisis but faces legal fallout 
Boston Globe
By Thomas Farragher
Globe Staff
March 25, 2015

When Jeff Lorditch went off to work early that morning, his wife of nine years and his young son slept soundly in their beds. In the quiet of that dawn, there was no trace of the tumult and tears just over his horizon.

He got to work to discover he was fired. Laid off, he says. In any case, on that mid-October morning of 2013, his job was gone.

When he got back to his home in Auburn about 9 a.m., his 7-year-old boy had left for school.

He walked in to find his wife in bed with another man. And he knew the guy. It was his brother, visiting from New Mexico.

“I think every married guy probably runs through that scenario in their head at some point,’’ Lorditch, 34, said. “I know I had.

And I never knew how I was going to react and hoped I would never have to find out. But I walked in and it took me a few minutes to actually register what was going on.

“I just couldn’t process it. I did a lot of pacing. I know I did some yelling. I said some things I never say.’’

What happened next, supported by statements given by his wife and brother to the Auburn Police Department, is important because it shows that Lorditch, an Iraq combat veteran and honorably discharged US Marine, is capable of vast restraint.

His mind was racing, his temper understandably elevated. “The one thing that stuck with me is that neither of them was attacking me and I live my life by this,’’ he said. “The only time violence is ever justified is in self-defense. So even though I was going through hell at that moment, they were not attacking me.’’

Lorditch, a gun collector and former Marine marksmanship instructor, unloaded a gun he kept in the living room in front of his wife and brother, made no threats, and then left the house.
read more here