Fighting for the love of Jack...and everyone else
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
June 15, 2019
Last week I sat down with Sgt. Dave Matthews of Remember the Fallen radio show on KLRN.
Dave wanted to talk about my book, For the Love of Jack, His War My Battle.
The copyright was issued in 2002. It was republished on Amazon in 2012 for the 10th anniversary. Republishing it was extremely hard on me.
Our lives are so much different than what they were back then. That was the point of writing this in the first place. All lives can change.
PTSD is change. It comes from being a victim of circumstance and changing into a survivor of something that tried to killed you. No shame in that but it is very telling that too many still want to cling to the thoughts they have something to be ashamed of.
What's up with that? I survived 10 times as just a civilian and there is no shame in me at all. I beat what tired to kill me and was not about to allow any of those times to define any part of my future.
It was the same with fighting PTSD in my home. I was not going to allow it to define my family.
You need to remember that when I wrote the book, no one was doing any "awareness" other than families like mine while we were America's secret war.
Listen to what families like mine have been talking about for decades and then ask yourself why have you been ignoring what is necessary to change the outcome?
Remember the Fallen on KLRN Wounded Times
A Suicide-by-Cop Attempt Prompts a Plan to Use Marijuana to Save Veterans
Miami New Times
CARLOS MILLER
JUNE 14, 2019
“Seeing that one of my own service members, a major that I’m supposed to look up to, couldn’t handle his own PTSD and decided to shoot up a soldier-reprocessing site made me feel absolutely terrible," Ortiz says. “I had survivor’s guilt, and I still have survivor’s guilt.”
Having failed at a previous suicide attempt, South Florida Army veteran J.C. Ortiz was determined to succeed the second time.
It was 2009 and he had just returned from his second tour of Iraq, where he had experienced a grueling 15 months of continual combat. Four years earlier, after another 18 months of war, he'd begun suffering from PTSD. He would become addicted to opioids.
Now the plan was to lock himself with bottles of rum and pills in the bathroom of his home on the Fort Hood military base in Texas. Through the door, he would tell his wife he was going to take his own life, knowing she would call military police.
Florida is home to 17 percent of the nation’s homeless, according to the U.S. Census. And the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans estimates veterans make up 11 percent of the nation's homeless population. Ortiz says there are 3,500 homeless veterans in South Florida.
read more here
Hero Down: Gothenburg Police Officer Jill Larson Murdered By Husband
Blue Lives Matter
Holly Matkin
June 14, 2019
Gothenburg Police Officer Jill Larson served her department for 12 years.
Gothenburg, NE – Gothenburg Police Officer Jill Larson was fatally shot by her husband at their home on June 7.
A relative discovered the bodies of the 53-year-old veteran officer and her 52-year-old husband, Jeff McCandless, at approximately 9p.m. the next day, and alerted police, the Kearney Hub reported.
Investigators said they believe Jeff murdered Officer Larson, then fatally shot himself, according to the Lincoln Journal Star.
The Dawson County Attorney’s Office and the Nebraska State Patrol are handling the ongoing investigation into the murder-suicide.
Officer Larson joined the Gothenburg Police Department in 2007, and became the third woman to ever serve on the city’s police force, according to her obituary.
“Jill was considered by many to be one of the best police officers this community has ever had,” the City of Gothenburg said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
read more here
He Wanted to Apologize for Cutting Off Another Driver. It Ended in a Deadly Shootout
Sun Sentinel
By Wayne K. Roustan and Laurel Weibezahn
13 Jun 2019
DAVIE, Florida -- Keith Byrne was trying to do the right thing. After the Marine Corps veteran accidentally cut off another car, he was ready to apologize at the next light.
Before he could, a passenger got out of the cut-off car and shot him square in the chest.
The mortally wounded Byrne, 41, was also prepared to fight back. With his own gun, he fired two shots at 22-year-old Andre Sinclair, and Sinclair died of his injuries at the hospital two days later. Byrne died on scene.
Sinclair had been a passenger in the car his girlfriend was driving. Their toddler was in the backseat.
read more here
Veteran 'literally body-slammed' by VA police: Lawmakers grill VA on use of force
USA TODAY
Donovan Slack
June 11, 2019
WASHINGTON – One described a Veterans Affairs police officer throwing a New York veteran seeking therapy to the ground. Another said a California veteran died after receiving similar treatment at the hands of VA police there.
A third noted that a VA officer training to be an instructor at the national VA police academy threatened employees with a gun at a Massachusetts car dealership.
The underlying question from lawmakers to VA officials Tuesday: What is going on with VA police?
“I mean really what are they doing over there?” asked Rep. Gilbert Cisneros, Jr, D-Calif., who questioned training in particular. “Why are we having these situations where individuals are being injured or hurt or killed?”
An investigation of the VA police force by the agency’s inspector general concluded in December that systemic management failures had resulted in short-staffing and millions in overtime charged to taxpayers, as well as missed opportunities to ensure staff and veteran patients were protected.
USA TODAY reported in December on a case in Missouri where a veteran died after being tackled and detained by VA police in Kansas City.
read more here
After seeing an elderly veteran living in squalor, an Uber driver stepped in to help
CNN
By Sophie Sherry and Christina Zdanowicz
June 14, 2019
"He is so thankful, he cracks me up. He keeps saying, 'I don't know what I did to deserve all of this from all you guys,'" said Mulvihill. "It's giving him hope that he will be taken care of."
(CNN)Lauren Mulvihill did not know what to expect when she was called to the hospital for an Uber pick up.
89-year-old Ronald Dembner had just been discharged from the hospital with no one to take him home.
Last week, Mulvihill drove Dembner from the hospital in Henry County, Georgia, to his home and helped him inside. When she saw the terrible condition of his home, she knew she needed to help.
Dembner, who Mulvihill calls Mr. Ronald, is a widower and veteran who now lives alone with his dog King. He has no living family. Mulvihill said that Dembner had not called someone to help clean his house out of fear they would take it away from him.
The veteran has been living in squalor. Dembner has his wits about him, but he has a hard time getting around, cleaning the house and picking up after his dog.
read more here
Fake obituary stuns Chesterfield veteran and his family: ‘I woke up to the sound of my mom crying’
CBS 6 News
BY JON BURKETT AND MIKE BERGAZZI
JUNE 13, 2019
“We can confirm that a private citizen submitted this false information to the Times-Dispatch through our online obituary portal,” said Jason Dillon, vice president of advertising for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. -- Justin Felger joined the United States Navy shortly after 9/11 but found his calling as an infantryman in the Virginia Army National Guard, which put him on the front lines in Iraq.
“I wanted to fight for the red, white, and blue,” Felger said. “Every time we went out there, it was every corner, every step we took you had to worry about losing your life.”
Staff Sgt. Felger survived two combat tours.
But last month he became a fallen soldier, or so it was written.
“Woke up to the sound of, well, my mom was crying,” Felger said. “My dad had to break the news to me.”
An obituary published in the May 9 edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch claimed that the Chesterfield native had died unexpectedly at the age of 36.
Someone had also created a separate memorial website.
The minutes and hours that followed were chaotic.
read more here
Winter Park Vietnam War veteran, who died from Agent Orange effects, to be honored in Washington, D.C.
ORLANDO SENTINEL
By MARTIN E. COMAS
JUN 13, 2019
Just months after Robert Earl Hanson graduated from Colonial High School in 1966, the outgoing young man known as “Bobby” found himself thrust into the jungles of Vietnam as an Army private carrying a teletype machine and a rifle.
Patricia Hanson holds an old photo of her and her late husband, Robert Earl Hanson, who died in June 2018 of cancer caused by exposure to Agent Orange. (Martin E. Comas / Orlando Sentinel)
At the time, U.S. military planes were spraying millions of gallons of the defoliant Agent Orange across the Vietnamese countryside to expose enemy soldiers during the Vietnam War.
Hanson, like millions of other American and Vietnamese soldiers, was exposed to the dangerous herbicide. It led to Hanson’s malignant lung cancer decades later and ultimately caused his death on June 29, 2018, at the age of 69, according to doctors.
On Saturday, Hanson will be among 536 deceased veterans — including 13 from Florida — who will be inducted into the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund’s “In Memory Program” as part of an annual three-day ceremony held every June in Washington, D.C.
read more here
Family claims US Army vet was murdered in police custody
New York Post
By Tamar Lapin
June 12, 2019
They claim that when his body was returned to them, his throat, heart and brain were missing.
The family of a US Army veteran who died last year in Pennsylvania police custody are claiming he was murdered, according to published reports.
The last time relatives of Queens-born Everett Palmer Jr., 41, heard from him was in April 2018, when he said he was going to Pennsylvania to resolve an outstanding DUI warrant from two years earlier, the family said.
Palmer, a dad of two who lived in Delaware, was booked into a single cell at the York County Prison on April 7, 2018.
Two days later, he was dead.
“The most frustrating part is my son being murdered and not having any answers to how he was murdered,” Rose Palmer, Everett’s mother, said during a Tuesday press conference, according to CBS News.
“Since April 9, I have not had a good night sleep since I think about my child and the possible scenarios. It is torture. He didn’t deserve this,” she said. “He went there to check on his license and he never made it out.”
read more here
The Army Ignored Her Warnings About a Dangerous Colleague. Then He Set Her on Fire
Task and Purpose
By James Clark
5 Jun 2019
Alone in her office, Katie Blanchard saw him out of the corner of her eye.
It was Clifford Currie, a 54-year-old civilian employee who Blanchard supervised. She couldn't yet see what was in his hands.
For months, Blanchard, then a first lieutenant, had warned her supervisors and coworkers that something would happen to her. She told them that Currie scared her. He would fly off the handle at a moment's notice. He would yell and physically intimidate her.
She told them Currie was dangerous.
Then he did what she said he would.
As Currie stood in the doorway of Blanchard's second floor office at Munson Army Health Center, he pulled out a small clear bottle filled with a brown liquid. His eyes were glazed over and bloodshot as he doused her in gasoline.
Then he lit a pair of matches and threw them on the 26-year-old Army nurse, lighting her on fire.
read more here
