Thursday, January 5, 2012

Navy pilot killed self in San Diego murder-suicide

Navy pilot killed self in San Diego murder-suicide
By JULIE WATSON, Associated Press – 10 hours ago
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A New Year's Day shooting that left four people dead at a condominium near San Diego was a murder-suicide involving a 25-year-old Navy pilot who killed himself, officials said Wednesday.

John Robert Reeves shot himself in the head, and the three others with him were murdered, the San Diego County Sheriff's Department said, citing autopsy results.

Fellow Navy pilot David Reis, also 25, was killed by a gunshot wound to the torso, and his 24-year-old sister, Karen, suffered a gunshot wound to the head and chest, officials said. Matthew Saturley, 31, of Chula Vista was shot multiple times.

Sheriff's Capt. Duncan Fraser said there were no outstanding suspects in the case, and police have found no evidence indicating there was an exchange of gunfire, although he declined to say if Reeves was the shooter, explaining that "we don't have forensic evidence yet to say that definitively."

"We have no eyewitnesses to what happened inside the residence," Fraser told reporters. "We don't know what the motive was."

Reeves' family members could not immediately be reached for comment.

The unusual case rocked the Navy's elite, tight-knit aviation community, many of whom live on Coronado, a picturesque peninsular enclave of 24,000 people on San Diego Bay that recorded only one homicide in 2010 and is home to Naval Air Station North Island.

It takes years of training to get wings as a Navy pilot. Aviation students are selected after standing out among their Navy peers, and fighter jet pilots are considered to be top performers among pilots.

Reeves, of Prince Frederick, Md., and Reis, of Bakersfield, Calif., were both F/A-18 fighter pilots assigned to the Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 101 of the Third Marine Aircraft Wing at nearby Miramar Air Station. Both men joined the Navy in 2008 at separate universities.
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2 Navy Pilots among dead

Navy police called in for murder-suicide investigation

Researchers now looking at PTSD link in DNA?

Veterans taking part in massive DNA project
Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Carolyn Johnson

PALO ALTO, Calif. (KGO) -- Bay Area veterans are answering the call to help with a massive research project and when it is up and running, it could provide new answers for some difficult-to-treat conditions.

Marine Corps veteran Andrew Peters says he was one of the lucky ones. He returned from Iraq with no major injuries but now, eight years later, he is volunteering for a different kind of mission. He is donating his DNA as a part of a massive project being launched by the VA. Its goal is to assemble one of the largest genetic databases ever created.

"As a veteran, it's really a fairly minor contribution for my part for something that is likely to help me down the road, as well as my fellow veterans," Peters said.

"There's many things that we hope to get out of this database and this access, for future researchers," said Dr. Jennifer Hoblyn at the VA in Palo Alto.

Hoblyn is the director of in-patient mental health and says information gleaned from the genetic database may help unlock the physical mysteries of conditions like PTSD.
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San Diego naval hospital testing unusual PTSD treatment

San Diego naval hospital testing unusual PTSD treatment
The Pentagon is spending hundreds of millions of dollars searching for a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, the overarching term for the nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety and restlessness suffered by many troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

By Tony Perry
Los Angeles Times


SAN DIEGO — The Pentagon is spending hundreds of millions of dollars searching for a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, the overarching term for the nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety and restlessness suffered by many troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nearly all of the dozens of research projects involve long-term counseling and prescription drugs.

But researchers at the Naval Medical Center San Diego believe that something as seemingly simple as injections of an anesthetic given to women during childbirth may be effective in alleviating the symptoms associated with PTSD.

Early testing on several dozen veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts has proved promising, with some, although not all, showing signs of relief from stellate ganglion block treatment, researchers said.

"It may be a significant tool in our armory" to fight PTSD, said Dr. Robert McLay, a psychiatrist and director of mental-health research at the medical center.

McLay, whose book "At War With PTSD" will soon be published by Johns Hopkins University Press, says he was skeptical when he first heard about the treatment.

"I thought this was a little wacky when it was mentioned," he said.
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Off-Duty Cop, Iraq War Vet, beaten at Winter Classic

UPDATE
Arrest made in beating of N.J. cop after Rangers-Flyers game

Rangers Fan Beaten in Winter Classic Fight Was Off-Duty Cop, Iraq War Vet
The fight took place in Philadelphia after the Winter Classic Monday night
By Pei-Sze Cheng and Brian Thompson
Thursday, Jan 5, 2012

Thirty-year-old Neal Auricchio has worn many uniforms, previously as a Marine and currently as an officer of the Woodbridge Police Department. But it was his Rangers hockey jersey that may have made him the target of a brutal beating Monday night.

"He got banged up pretty badly," his father Neal Auricchio, Sr., told NBC New York Wednesday.

"Stitches in the one eye, and the other eye is pretty puffed up. He went for a CAT scan today, and we're waiting for the results on that."

Video of the assault was posted to YouTube Monday night, after the Philadelphia Flyers and the New York Rangers faced off in the Winter Classic in Philadelphia. Three men wearing Flyers jerseys were seen in the video assaulting two men wearing New York Rangers jerseys in front of the famed Geno's Steaks eatery.
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Wednesday, January 4, 2012

2,000 attend service for Deputy Matt Miller

Deputy Matt Miller: 'He didn't speak a lot. He smiled a lot'
Gov. Rick Scott and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi attended the service in Longwood
By Gary Taylor, Orlando Sentinel
2:35 p.m. EST, January 4, 2012

LONGWOOD – A Seminole County deputy sheriff who died in the line of duty last month was remembered today for his service to community.

About 2,000 people — many of them law enforcement officers from around the Southeast U. S. — attended the funeral for Deputy Matt Miller. Also in attendance were Gov. Rick Scott and state Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The service at Northland, A Church Distributed, ran almost an hour longer than expected and was followed by a lengthy procession to Oakland Park Cemetery in Lake Mary.

Miller, 53, was killed Dec. 26 at the intersection of Maitland Boulevard and Gateway Drive when his motorcycle collided with a car while he was trying to catch up to a speeding vehicle.

"The Seminole County Sheriff's Office is a better organization and the community is safer because of the efforts of Matt,'' Seminole County Sheriff Don Eslinger said during the service.

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