Iraq War veteran home just 4 days is fatally shot during standoff

UPDATE to this story
Troubles haunted soldier killed in confrontation with troopers from WBTV

Iraq War veteran home just 4 days is fatally shot during standoff
Jan 08, 2012
IREDELL COUNTY, NC (WBTV) - Three troopers with the North Carolina Highway Patrol are on administrative leave after they were involved in the deadly shooting of an Iraq War veteran early Sunday morning.

The incident happened around 2:30 am Sunday when three troopers and an Iredell County Sheriff's Deputy went to an Iredell County home to follow up on a hit and run, according to a news release from the N.C. Department of Crime Control and Public Safety,

Investigators say the man, later identified as 45-year-old William D. Miller Jr., exited the house carrying a weapon. All four officers repeatedly instructed Miller, who had been home from his deployment less than a week, to drop his weapon.

As the Iredell County Deputy attempted to shock Miller with a taser, Miller began firing at the officers, the release said.

The three state troopers all returned fire; one of shots was fatal.

WBTV has learned that Miller recently returned from Iraq, having served with the Blackhawk helicopter united based in Salisbury. Just before Christmas, Miller returned from Iraq to a Texas base with his unit.
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Hundreds of 'Sensitive' Military Items Stolen at Lewis-McChord

Hundreds of 'Sensitive' Military Items Stolen at JBLM

January 09, 2012
Seattle Times|by Amy Martinez

The company under investigation is from the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.

About 100 Soldiers at Joint Base Lewis-McChord remained restricted to the base Sunday after hundreds of sensitive items, including night-vision goggles and rifle scopes, were reported stolen from a supply area.

I Corps spokesman Maj. Chris Ophardt described the stolen items as "anything that attaches to a weapon or helps you see at night." The Army does not consider the equipment alone to be a danger to the public.

"You have to have other stuff to make it dangerous, and you have to know how to use it," Ophardt said Sunday. "It's not something the average Joe can attach to their gun and become instant Rambo."
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After WWII, vet endured a life of shell shock

This shows we've come a long way since the days when veterans came home suffering in silence. It also shows how we still don't do the right thing by all of our veterans.

After WWII, vet endured a life of shell shock

By Elizabeth Shestak
Correspondent
Posted: Monday, Jan. 09, 2012

When Bill Johnson returned from World War II, his family immediately knew there was something different about him.

In letters his mother wrote to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, she spoke of his restlessness, inability to hold a conversation, difficulty making friends, and new behavioral ticks.

"If you could know this boy now and before he went in the service, you couldn't believe it was the same boy. It is hard on me to watch him every day with no improvement. I have hoped so hard," she wrote.

She wrote this in 1950, nearly five years after he was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army after serving a tour in Italy. His family, namely his mother, spent decades petitioning the U.S. Army to acknowledge the changes in Johnson and claim them as service-related. It seemed simple to them - he was one way before entering the army, and another afterwards, going from "normal" to debilitated and dependent.

And yet his mental injuries were deemed 30 percent "non-service related," and Johnson was never compensated.
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Widow using horses near Joint Base Lewis-McChord to heal others

Yelm widow uses her horses to help returning war veterans heal
THE OLYMPIAN • Published January 08, 2012

An Army Iraq war veteran loses it and shoots several people in Skyway before fleeing to Mount Rainier and killing a park ranger. A former Army Ranger stabs another man outside an Olympia bar and receives a 10-year prison sentence.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord records a record number of suicides in 2011 and opens up a 408-bed barracks for its Wounded Warrior Transition Battalion. Combined with the Air Force’s Medical Flight, the number of JBLM soldiers and airmen suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury often swells to around 700.

The ruins of war are all around us in the South Sound, so how humbling would it be for a solider to say to you, “I was going to end my life, and now I’m not, because of what you did for me”?

Debbi Fisher of Yelm hears that almost every week.

Fisher lost her husband of 30 years, Randy, to a head-on car crash in 2006. He was a lieutenant colonel stationed at McChord Air Force Base, having served for 28 years.

To recover, she turned to the couple’s seven horses on their 5-acre farm. But her husband’s horse, a 16.3 hand, 1,500-pound giant named Root Beer, was riderless. So Randy’s superior officer rode with her every day for 30 days.

That experience of healing through horsemanship took three more years to gel, but Fisher retired from her 20-year career at U.S. Bank in 2009 and took what she calls a “step of faith.”
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Rainier Therapeutic Riding

Carbon monoxide leak at Merchant Marine Academy in NY sends 38 to hospital

Carbon monoxide leak at Merchant Marine Academy in NY sends 38 to hospital for evaluation

By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, January 9, 12:46 AM

KINGS POINT, N.Y. — Nassau County police say about 38 people have been taken from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point to area hospitals for evaluation after carbon monoxide was found to be leaking at the facility.
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