Monday, October 29, 2018

Sailor stopped to help driver, then was shot to death

Navy sailor in San Diego shot by driver he stopped to help


WTKR 3 News
NICK BOYKIN
OCTOBER 27, 2018
The victim was identified as 21-year-old Curtis Adams of San Diego. Adams was on active duty with the Navy at the time of his murder, said Lt. Dupree.
SAN DIEGO — An active-duty Navy service member was killed after pulling over to help what he thought was a stranded motorist early Saturday, said police, according to FOX 5 in San Diego.

The San Diego Police Department received a call around 2:20 a.m. about a shooting that occurred at southbound Interstate 15 at the northbound Interstate 5 ramp. The caller stated her boyfriend was shot, said San Diego Police Lt. Anthony Dupree.

Investigators learned the victim and his girlfriend pulled over to help what they thought was a stranded motorist. When the victim got out of the car, he was shot immediately.

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Veteran called crisis line, shot and killed by police

Veteran called crisis hotline, pointed gun at police, was killed by officer, Houston police say


Click 2 Houston News
Megan Kennedy
Brittany Taylor
October 27, 2018

Carroll had served in the military for four or five years and suffered from PTSD, his father-in-law told KPRC. Carroll leaves behind a 16-month-old child. 

HOUSTON - A man was shot and later died after pointing a gun at Houston police officers, the department said.

The suspect, identified by family members as a veteran, had initially called a veterans' crisis hotline for assistance, the family said. The man told the crisis hotline that he had cut himself and was armed with a gun. Houston police confirmed the department received the routed 911 call from a U.S. Department of Veteran's Affairs Crisis hotline.

The man has been identified as 30-year-old Christopher Carroll.

After receiving the 911 call, investigators responded to the man's home on Eagle Creek Drive around 12:45 a.m. Saturday.

When they arrived, they located a family member attempting to calm Carroll down, said Matt Slinkard, an assistant executive chief with the special operations command with the Houston Police Department. Family members of Carroll told police he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and was currently experiencing a crisis.
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Sunday, October 28, 2018

What actually defines us, are actions like this!

Evil shall not define us

Combat PTSD Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 28, 2018

Most of today, I have been listening to the news reports about the massacre in Pittsburgh. Yesterday I had let a comment on Google+ that the people had gone to pray and worship and someone went to kill them because they did.

It was shocking, but we have had many times such as this. It is easier to think of all the bad that came out of the murder's hatred.

CNN just reported on the mass murder in Pittsburgh.These are the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting but when we think of how one person hated so much, we may tend to think that actions based on hatred have become what defines us.

What actually defines us, are actions like this!
People hold candles outside the Tree of Life Synagogue after a shooting there left 11 people dead in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh on October 27, 2018.
Maybe the thing that scares us the most, is, we know the next time it could be anyone deciding to take out their misery on others. Maybe it is because we also know, it could happen anywhere, at anytime.

Easy to have our thoughts go in that direction. It is easy to want to stay in the safety of our homes, behind locked doors. Easy to shop online instead of going out in public. Easy to keep our kids home and teach them there, instead of sending them to school. Easy to communicate with strangers on our cell phones, than to sit and talk, eye to eye, as if they deserved your full attention.

It has become easy to justify being offended by the least little thing, as if everyone else should bow down and let them have their own way. Being offended has become a full time cause, feeding into those who hate instead of finding what binds us by what we communicate.

What is hard, is not what is done by evil acts. That is always something easy for them to do. What defines us is, what we do in response.

When we refuse to stop worshiping, as we choose, that defines us.

When we refuse to stop going shopping and being out with others, that defines us.

When we refuse to settle for what is, because we are constantly thinking of what could be, that defines us.

When we refuse to let an act of pure hate take one moment of love from our hearts, that defines us too.

When we see someone in need and refuse to walk away, that defines us. 

When we see someone being abused and refuse to think it is their problem and not ours, that defines us.

When we stand against what some of our friends think is OK, and we refuse to remain silent, that defines us.


We have witnessed many, far too many, acts committed by hatred to have forgotten how time and time again, we respond with love and compassion for the victims, support for the survivors and gratefulness for the First Responders. We also do it with a tremendous amount of courage. 

One person acts out of hate, hundreds respond with compassion.

That is what we will be defined by!

Four Police Officers among the wounded in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh synagogue mass shooting claims 11 lives; 4 officers among multiple wounded: Officials

"First responders prevented the shooting from becoming a worse tragedy, and the injured have been taken to three area hospitals with level one trauma centers. Without their courage, this tragedy would have been far worse." Alleghany Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich
read more from ABC News

'Darkest day in Pittsburgh's history': Officials discuss new details in Squirrel Hill massacre

Pittsburgh Post Gazette Shelly Bradbury and Ashley Murray October 28,2018 Law enforcement officers, prosecutors and others discussed the latest details of Saturday’s mass shooting at Tree of Life Congregation in Squirrel Hill at a Sunday morning press conference.
The 11 people killed inside a Squirrel Hill synagogue Saturday included a husband and wife and two brothers, authorities said Sunday. 

The victims, who ranged in age from 54 to 97, were identified as: Joyce Fienberg, 75, of Oakland
Richard Gottfried, 65, of Ross
Rose Mallinger, 97, of Squirrel Hill
Jerry Rabinowitz, 66, of Edgewood
brothers Cecil Rosenthal, 59, of Squirrel Hill, and David Rosenthal, 54, of Squirrel Hill
married couple Bernice Simon, 84, and Sylvan Simon, 86, of Wilkinsburg
Daniel Stein, 71, of Squirrel Hill
Melvin Wax, 88, of Squirrel Hill
Irving Younger, 69, of Mt. Washington. 

Widow fights for one of 2 million veterans not counted!

Widow’s fight: A 40-year-old suicide, a ‘bad paper’ discharge and marijuana


Herald Tribune
Bill Cox
October 28, 2018


A week before Christmas, Peter hanged himself from a tree in the woods near Walpole, Massachusetts. (1978)

Joanne Mills has been fighting to upgrade her husband’s 1971 ‘undesirable’ discharge from the Navy, which stemmed from a $10 bag of marijuana.
SARASOTA — Joanne Mills was all of 19, never had a boyfriend, when he sold her two pairs of shoes at the Thom McAn store in a Boston mall. “He had the most beautiful piercing blue eyes I’ve ever seen,” she recalls. She went home with buyer’s remorse — too expensive. She returned one pair hours later; the blue-eyed heartthrob was still working his shift. He asked her something like, do you ever go to the beach?

It was the summer of 1971, and Peter MacRoberts, 21, had a sky-blue two-door Ford Fairlane with a black ragtop. They went everywhere, day trips to Cape Cod, rock concerts, Frank Zappa, The Eagles, Chicago. He was a sports nut, loved to play baseball, cheer the Bosox at Fenway Park, and recite batting averages, ERAs.

But Peter was broken, and the full extent of it never became clear until much later. Even when she walked in on his unlocked apartment when they were still dating, and found him alone, electrical cord wrapped around his neck, racked with shame and despair — even then, Joanne underestimated its magnitude.

“I blocked out so much. I thought it was because we had broken up,” Joanne remembers. “But I never pursued it. I was just a kid. He made me promise I would never leave him.”
read more here

Keep this in mind the next time you hear about how many veterans committed suicide today. None of these veterans would be included in on any reported number, but families remember their names!


"In 2016, the Veterans Legal Clinic at Harvard Law School produced a study called “Underserved: How the VA Wrongfully Excludes Veterans with Bad Paper.” It found that since the Vietnam War, nearly 2 million veterans have been dispatched with general or less than honorable discharges. Such “bad paper” can inhibit or deny completely their access to VA services."
It is even higher now!