Vow to Save Others Started After Fort Drum Soldier Committed Suicide

Colton Derr's Army buddy wishes he had done more, but vows to help others considering suicide
Rapid City Journal
Bart Pfankuch Journal Staff
October 17, 2015

Stephen Daniel

Almost every day, Sgt. Stephen Daniel thinks about the last text message he received from his Army buddy Colton Levi Derr, and he wonders: Could I have saved him if I had responded differently?

Sgt. Daniel and Sgt. Derr, who served together in Iraq in 2008, became close friends and shared a bond that can only be forged by wartime service and the shared experience of combat.

As a result, Daniel knew when he received the text message just after Easter 2012 that Colton was suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder, and was on shaky emotional footing.

Daniel, who will share his story during a Rapid City banquet on Saturday, said the two men were living on different American bases at the time.

Colton, 25, a native of New Underwood who served or led 500 missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, texted Daniel to say that he thought his girlfriend was about to dump him, and that he was shaken by it.

"I was in an arms room counting weapons, and I wrote back something like, 'Dude, there's so many fish in the sea; stop trying to chase just one,'" Daniel recalled in a recent interview. "It was a completely generic, non-compassionate answer that I would have sent to anyone."

Not long after, on April 28, 2012, Colton killed himself off base in Fort Drum, New York.
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