Iraq Veteran Murdered in Phoenix Remembered

Family, friends release balloons for Marine veteran murdered in Phoenix park
AZ Family
Derek Staahl
August 10, 2016

PHOENIX (KPHO/KTVK)
Family and friends returned to the west Phoenix park where a Marine veteran who was murdered to share memories and release balloons Tuesday in his honor.

Dozens came out to remember the life of Dustin Shirk. (Source: KPHO/KTVK)

The ceremony was held on what would have been Dustin Shirk’s 31st birthday. The Iraq war veteran was killed July 26 in Cielito Park while jogging after his late-night shift at UPS, according to his mother. Police have not identified a suspect.

Many of the people who gathered Tuesday were Shirk's co-workers at UPS, where he worked before and after his military service.

"He was kind of, I guess my inspiration," said Mitchell MacKenzie, a UPS employee who worked in the finance department with Shirk. "He kind of helped me move along to join the Navy."
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PTSD: Sheriff Says South Carolina Veteran Committed Suicide By Cop

Sheriff: Veteran With PTSD Committed “Suicide by Cop”
ABC Columbia Staff
August 9, 2016

Little Mountain, S.C. (WOLO) — Richland County Coroner Gary Watts has identified than man involved in Monday’s officer involved shooting as James W. Jennings Jr.

According to Watts, autopsy results show Jennings died of multiple gunshot wounds to the upper body including one that was self inflicted. Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott tells ABC Columbia, Monday evening deputies responded to a domestic dispute on Wash Lever Road to find Jennings barricaded inside his home. Lott explains that after hours of negotiation the man shot himself twice before pointing the gun at officer, who returned fire.

“We tried to use non lethal means to subdue him, that didn’t work and when he actually threatened the officer and pointed the gun we didn’t have a choice at that point. You know, he was trying to get us to kill him.” says Lott.

The Sheriff says Jennings was a military veteran suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
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PTSD Awareness Up And So Are Suicides

Things Changed For The Worst
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
August 10, 2016

In 1982 when I started trying to do something about PTSD, I thought if people knew, things would change. I just never expected they would make it worse.

Back then there was a lot of work already being done for about a decade before I even heard the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It wasn't as if it was on the nightly news.  When I started to read about it at the library, it was obvious a lot of people were trying to change what had happened to veterans going all the way back to the invention of war itself.

In 1978 the Disabled American Veterans did a study on PTSD called The Forgotten Warrior Project which is a perfect title considering what they learned back then has been forgotten about.  Everyone seems to think all they have to do is make folks aware of PTSD and suicides without ever considering how much work is necessary to change the outcome.  The easy part is talking about a problem.  The hard part is investing the time to research it, understand it and then, try to make a difference in a good way.

So far most of what I've seen are a bunch of people running around the country, collecting cash talking about suicides when they do not even bother to read the reports they quote.  They act like they are the ones who will do something about it as if no one else had done the same exact thing before and produced the same abysmal results.

Wounded Times is 9 years old today. 

You can see a lot of what I do on this site but there is more you will never know about. I learned from the best over these decades, that we can accomplish a lot more by working with the veterans for their sake and not our own publicity.

There are a group of veterans and their families doing exactly that and I am very proud to be a part of them.  Point Man International Ministries started in 1984 quietly by a Vietnam veteran/Seattle Police Officer because he understood that most of the veterans he was arresting were more lost than anything else.

It worked.  It worked because it was understood that the families needed help in order to help the veterans.  That is, if they were lucky enough to still have a family by their side. 

It worked because peer support was provided. Yes, they knew how vital that was way back then.  That the wound hit the emotional part of the brain, so it had to healed first especially when the center held the soul paying the price for surviving the hell of combat.

Guess what? It still works. The thing is, you don't see them doing interviews with the press or jumping up and down about how many lose hope to the point where they no longer believe the next day could be any better than their last day on earth. They are there to give them back hope and walk right by their side until they can turn around and do the same for another veteran.

It is Christian based, so the press would not take an interest no matter how good it is or how man miracles happen every day. They are much like the 72 Jesus sent out but no one knows their names.

The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.”

The demons we battle are all that comes with PTSD beginning with the false notion that they are mentally weak instead of emotionally strong paying the price for risking their lives for the sake of someone else. The demon telling them they are evil because of all the saw and did, when in fact there was nothing evil about doing all of it to save lives, which is at the core of what caused them to act. The demon that tells them their suffering is some kind of punishment and they are suffering because they were judged instead of hurting because they cared.

When the world walks away from them, turns their backs so they cannot see the pain in their eyes, settling for the moniker of "it is invisible" so they dismiss them, God sees all that very clearly and He remembers those who are suffering for His sake.  He also sees those who use their pain for their own purpose, be it for fame or fortune.

On a final note I will leave you with this important fact.  With no one making this suffering headline news back in 1999, the VA reported 20 veterans a day took their own lives. There are almost 7 million less veterans, everyone talking about PTSD and suicides, the VA is reporting 20 veterans a day taking their own lives. It got worse because too many put themselves first instead of those they claim to be raising awareness about.

Petty Officer and Nurse Saved 84 Year Old Ready to Jump From Bridge

Navy aircrewman, nurse, team to stop San Diego bridge suicide
The San Diego Union-Tribune (Tribune News Service)
By Pauline Repard and Lyndsay Winkley
Published: August 9, 2016

It was a life-or-death moment on the San Diego-Coronado Bridge Monday in San Diego, Calif. when a Naval aircrewman pulled over to stop a man from leaping into the bay.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Nick Pisano, shown here in an undated photo, and an unidentified nurse helped stop an elderly man from jumping off the San Diego-Coronado Bridge and were reunited via social media later that day. VIA FACEBOOK

As the two struggled, the 21-year-old Petty Officer 3rd Class Nick Pisano screamed for someone to help him talk the man down. Dozens of motorists whizzed past, until a nurse stopped, and calmed the man down until authorities arrived.

Pisano told the San Diego Union-Tribune Tuesday that there was no way he was going to let the man jump.

“I made sure I had a good grasp on his arm so he couldn't make his way closer to the ledge,” the native San Diegan said. “He was making it very clear that he wanted to end his life, and I did what I could to make sure that didn't happen.”

Pisano didn’t think to grab his phone in his haste to get to the man, so he started waiving down motorists, hoping someone would help. He didn’t even notice the nurse until she was at his side.

“She went right at it,” he said. “She was cool, calm, collected and knew exactly what to say him.”
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Purple Heart Veteran Getting Thousands to Send Trump to Earn One

Purple Heart recipient raises money in Trump’s name, but not to help Trump 
Boston Globe
By Kevin Cullen
GLOBE COLUMNIST
AUGUST 08, 2016

Kerr responded to all this not with anger but satire. He put up a GoFundMe page asking people to donate money to send Donald Trump to a combat zone where he could earn a Purple Heart. “I figured I’d get 150 bucks,” Kerr said.

By Monday, after various news outlets picked up his story and it spread on social media, more than 2,000 people had donated more than $54,000.

There was a high-end fund-raiser for Donald Trump on Nantucket over the weekend, where donors were asked to fork over as much as $50,000.

Cameron Kerr, a prolific but neophyte fund-raiser, couldn’t make the island gig, or another Trump fund-raiser at posh Oyster Harbors on the Cape. Still, the 29-year-old Kerr, a Massachusetts native, has raised more than $50,000 in Trump’s name in just five days.

It’s money Trump will never see.

To understand this, you have to go back to Stow, where Cameron Kerr grew up and decided to join the Army. He joined because of what he saw growing up. His parents mentored the orphans of African civil war, the Lost Boys of Sudan. He became friendly with a lot of the Lost Boys who resettled around Worcester.

Kerr was deeply affected by their stories of loss and survival, the kindness that Americans showed in helping them resettle, the Lost Boys’ resilience. He joined the Army to combat extremism, to protect the innocent, to hold accountable the very sort of people who would murder the families of his friends, the Lost Boys.
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