Vietnam Veteran With PTSD Needed Hospitalization, Got Incarceration Instead

Vietnam veteran Ron Buis remains jailed, demands trial
WHNT 19 News
BY AL WHITAKER
JUNE 11, 2015

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) – A follow-up tonight to a story we’ve been watching for several months now. Ron Buis is a decorated combat veteran, but he cannot enjoy the freedoms he nearly died for. He’s been in jail for almost two years as a direct result of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder he brought back from Vietnam.

Buis was arrested in September, 2013 after he started shooting at the voices in his head. His closest friends confirmed Buis had been acting differently in the weeks leading up to the event, claiming to see and hear people who simply were not there. The bullet holes in his mobile home bear out the conflict. Some of the bullets hit the trailers next to his resulting in charges of shooting into an occupied dwelling.

And so Buis has sat in the Madison County Jail since his arrest awaiting trial and awaiting treatment for the condition that put him there.

At a preliminary hearing Thursday morning, some 21 months after his arrest, his attorney got the court to order a mental evaluation. John Taylor says Buis needs hospitalization instead of incarceration.
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