Army veteran-mailman killed helping protect woman

Mailman fatally shot by teen was father of four, Army veteran

KOAT
Kay Dimanche
Reporter
Jozelyn Escobedo
Digital Editor
April 23, 2019

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.

A U.S. Postal Service mailman was gunned down Monday afternoon and police believe a 17-year-old boy is the one who shot him. According to an arrest warrant, 47-year-old Jose Hernandez was trying to intervene in a fight between the teen and the teen’s mother at the time of the shooting.

Hernandez's Bishop tells KOAT he was an Army veteran, husband and father of four.

The shooting happened in the 700 block of Terracotta SW, which is near Tower Road and 98th Street.

Xavier Zamora's mother told police Hernandez was trying to help her, but Zamora became "aggressive" with the mailman because he tried using Mace on the teen.
read more here

Florida veteran moved back to California...and into "Faith Defines Us"

Affordable housing helps veteran start clothing company

The Signal
Emily Alvarenga
April 18, 2019

Now, Martin owns his own business. “Faith Defines Us” is an online Christian apparel brand that, according to Martin, is “more than just selling clothes, it’s like a ministry.”

Tommy Martin served in the U.S. Army for six years before moving to California from Florida.

“I just wanted something different from where I grew up,” Martin said.

He then “played catch up by going back to school” and went on to get three bachelor’s degrees in marketing, business law and design.

Martin and his wife were living in San Francisco and looking for Veteran Affairs housing benefits a couple of years ago, when they stumbled upon the Santa Clarita Veteran Enriched Neighborhood.

A total of 78 single-family homes were being built by Homes 4 Families, a nonprofit dedicated to helping create affordable housing for veterans.

“(My wife) grew up in Santa Clarita, and didn’t want to move back, but God works in mysterious ways,” Martin said.
read more here

Man Risked Life to Save Veteran and Wife in Las Vegas

Veteran talks to man who shielded him, dying wife, after Vegas shooting
KWTX 10 News
Julie Hays
October 5, 2017

WACO, Texas (KWTX) An Army veteran whose wife of 32 years was killed in the Las Vegas shooting rampage heads home Friday, but not before he talked to the stranger who shielded him and his dying wife as shots rang out.

“It was a selfless act of kindness,” Tony Burditus said Thursday.

His wife Denise was among the 58 who died when Stephen Paddock opened fire on the crowd at the Route 91 Harvest Festival Sunday night on the Las Vegas Strip.

Burditus will fly back to West Virginia Friday after the Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office released his wife’s body.

But before he left Las Vegas he had an emotional phone conversation with the stranger who threw himself on top of the couple as bullets flew.

Sam Porter, a CPA from California, was attending the three-day music festival outside the Mandalay Bay hotel with 15 friends, mostly Los Angeles firefighters, when bullets began to rain down around them.

As news organizations began to identify the shooting victims and showed photographs, Porter immediately recognized Denise.
read more here

CNN posts temple shooter was Army veteran

Sources name alleged gunman in Wisconsin temple shooting
By the CNN Wire Staff
updated 9:14 AM EDT, Mon August 6, 2012

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
NEW: It's "Aurora one minute, the next it's you and your family," victim's relative says
Law enforcement officials name the shooter as Army veteran Wade Michael Page, 40
Those inside the temple say the man had a 9/11 tattoo on one arm
The wounded remain in critical condition

Oak Creek, Wisconsin (CNN) -- The man who shot six people to death and wounded three others during a rampage at a Sikh temple in a Milwaukee suburb was an Army veteran who may have been a white supremacist, according to a law enforcement source involved in the investigation.

Law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation named him Monday as Wade Michael Page, 40. One law enforcement official said he owned the gun used in the shooting legally.

He had apparently served on active duty, a U.S. official familiar with his record said.

The source declined to give further details.

The officials asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak on the record about the shooting investigation. A police officer responding to the attack shot and killed the gunman, police said.
read more here

Mom takes down robber at ATM

Mother Takes Down Robbery Suspect

John Meekin Wrestled To Ground While Fleeing

POSTED: 5:06 pm EDT October 5, 2011
OCALA, Fla. -- An Ocala mother wrestled and held a robbery suspect who was trying to flee from police.

It started Monday evening with Warren Kinsella, 55, who was withdrawing money from an automated teller machine near Ocala.

Investigators with the Marion County Sheriff's Office said John Meekin, 35, approached Kinsella on his bike, drew a gun and demanded money.

"I said no," Kinsella said. "I've got to pay bills with my money."

Kinsella retired from the Army and was a former military policeman. He said he shoved the bike out of the way and fled before following Meekin in his truck Kinsella said the gunman even shot at him but missed.

read more here

Judge allows veteran to sue Rumsfeld over his torture

Judge allows American to sue Rumsfeld over torture
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press – 1 day ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld can be sued personally for damages by a former U.S. military contractor who says he was tortured during a nine-month imprisonment in Iraq.

The lawsuit lays out a dramatic tale of the disappearance of the then-civilian contractor, an Army veteran in his 50s whose identity is being withheld from court filings for fear of retaliation.

Attorneys for the man, who speaks five languages and worked as a translator for Marines collecting intelligence in Iraq, say he was preparing to come home to the United States on annual leave when he was abducted by the U.S. military and held without justification while his family knew nothing about his whereabouts or even whether he was still alive.

The government says he was suspected of helping pass classified information to the enemy and helping anti-coalition forces get into Iraq. But he was never charged with a crime, and he says he never broke the law and was risking his life to help his country.

Court papers filed on his behalf say he was repeatedly abused while being held at Camp Cropper, a U.S. military facility near the Baghdad airport dedicated to holding "high-value" detainees, then suddenly released without explanation in August 2006.
read more here
Judge allows American to sue Rumsfeld over torture

Iraq Veteran locked up for "not being a citizen"

Veteran of Iraq War Now Fights His Own Deportation
By SUSANNAH NESMITH
Published: June 23, 2011

“We don’t often incarcerate war-hero-type people for making a false statement on a passport application,” Mr. Mervis said. “It’s a case that should never have been prosecuted criminally. This is just wrong.”

MIAMI — A veteran of both the Army and the Navy who served with distinction in Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay has spent the last month in federal lockup here because the government wants to deport him.

Not only did he lie on a passport application, prosecutors say, but he was never even a citizen.

But a lawyer for the man, Elisha L. Dawkins, 26, has a different story, one that begins with Mr. Dawkins’s arrival here from the Bahamas as an infant. He was raised to believe he was a citizen, his lawyer contends, something the state and federal authorities did not challenge during his seven years in the military.

It is unclear why Mr. Dawkins was indicted in March, five years after receiving his passport and when he was still in the Navy.

“The military believes he’s an American citizen,” the lawyer, Clark Mervis, told Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga of Federal District Court here last week, noting that Mr. Dawkins had “secret” security clearance when he served in Guantánamo.
read more here
Veteran of Iraq War Now Fights His Own Deportation

Retired Army veteran ends run across country in Rockland

Retired Army veteran ends run across country in Rockland
Flags planted every mile to honor service members who died in Iraq

10/15/10
By Heather Steeves
BDN Staff

ROCKLAND, Maine — The wind thrashed frothy waves against the shore here Friday as Mike Ehredt ran to the ocean, completing his 4,424-mile journey to honor U.S. service members who have died in Iraq.

Despite a thunderstorm that pelted rain on Ehredt, 49, and his supporters, more 100 people showed up in yellow shirts embossed with an American flag and the words, “Thanks, Mike.”

“It’s not raining today,” said James Troutt of Sherman, the grandfather of Army Spc. Dustin Harris of Patten, who died in April 2006 while serving in the war in Iraq. “God is crying a lot today.”

In a ceremony Friday morning, local police and government officials, members of the families of fallen Maine soldiers and Rockland residents gathered to celebrate Ehredt’s run. After each mile Ehredt ran in the past 5½ months, he planted a flag bearing the name of a soldier killed in Iraq. The project began in Oregon on May 1.

The retired U.S. Army veteran from Hope, Idaho, said he placed flags in lots of small towns across the country, with the goal of having people stop to remember the soldiers.

“We’re not alone. We are watched from above. I had guardian angels along the way,” Ehredt told the crowd at Friday’s ceremony, after the last flag was placed at Rockland Harbor. “They do know they are remembered. They are not forgotten.”The name on the final flag was that of Maj. Jay Thomas Aubin of Waterville, who was among the first casualties in the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Aubin, 36, was one of four U.S. Marines and eight British Marines killed on March 20, 2003, when a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter crashed in Kuwait near the Iraq border.
read more here
Retired Army veteran ends run across country in Rockland - Bangor ...
By By Heather Steeves BDN Staff

Father of two, Army veteran shot to death in Jackson murder-suicide

Father of two, Army veteran shot to death in Jackson murder-suicide
By Robert Wang
CantonRep.com staff writer
CANTON — Derrick Busto left two small children when he was shot to death Sunday morning in Jackson Township by the ex-husband of the woman he was dating.

His younger child, a son, is 2. His other child is an 8-year-old daughter, Harmony, who still doesn’t comprehend that her father is gone, said the girl’s mother, Kelly Henson, who’s also Busto’s ex-wife.

“I don’t think she understands right now. She hasn’t said much about it,” Henson, of Canton, said Tuesday. “She keeps asking if her daddy is OK.”

She said Busto was a good father who last summer helped coach their daughter’s softball team.
read more here
Army veteran shot to death in Jackson murder suicide

Police officer, Army Veteran, killed in the line of duty

9-year veteran of suburban force 'meant a lot to so many people'
Police officer's death deeply affects peers on his force and around metro area.

By MIKE KASZUBA, Star Tribune

Last update: September 7, 2009 - 10:30 PM


He was a grandfather, a U.S. Army veteran and had a wife who had once worked as a reserve officer on the same North St. Paul police force he worked on. He was a "fantastic person" with a sense of humor who led his department's motorcycle squad, the police chief said.

On a sunny Monday, he began a holiday shift at 7 a.m. Ninety minutes later Richard Crittenden, 57, who had spent nine years on the 19-member suburban police force, was dead.

The Maplewood police officer who had assisted Crittenden on a call to check a possible violation of a domestic protection order was wounded. And a 34-year-old suspect with a lengthy criminal record whom they had struggled with -- and who presumably shot Crittenden -- had also been killed.
read more here
9-year veteran of suburban force

Deputy killed in crash elk was Army veteran

Deputy killed in crash was Army veteran
By KOMO Staff PACKWOOD, Wash. - A Lewis County sheriff's deputy has died from injuries sustained in a collision with an elk near Packwood.

Officials said 34-year-old Stephen "Mike" Gallagher was flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle late Monday with life-threatening injuries, but died just after 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Deputy Stacy Brown said the Gallagher was responding to back up another deputy overnight on a domestic violence call Monday when his car hit the elk at about 8:30 p.m. near milepost 130 on Highway 12.

The sheriff's office said Gallagher had been with the department fo six years. He previously served eight years in the Army with deployments in Haiti and Kosovo. He leaves a wife and two young children.
read more here
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/53632167.html