Attempted Rapist Gets 20 Years After Attacking Army Captain

Ex-Navy reservist gets 20 years for attempted rape of Army captain in Kuwait 
The Virginian-Pilot 
By Scott Daugherty 
23 hrs ago

In court Monday, the victim recalled how she told the masked man that he didn’t need to do this, that he could just leave. She said the man, later identified as Garcia, responded by trying to drag her to a bathroom stall on the other side of the trailer. She said she fought back, only to be cut several times with a box cutter.

While showering almost six years ago in Kuwait, an Army captain turned around as someone pulled back the curtain.

She recalls thinking it was a friend pulling a prank on her, but then she saw a muscular man wearing a homemade ninja mask.

Amin Jason Carl Garcia – a former Navy reservist – was sentenced Monday to 20 years in prison for trying to sexually assault the woman. The sentence is on top of an earlier life-plus-30-years term he received in connection with a 2008 rape in Norfolk.

“It was a crime of barbaric, inhumane nature,” U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson said in court, adding that a review of Garcia’s life story reveals no explanation for his criminal record. “Somewhere along the way, something happened to you.”
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Suicide Prevention Not Preventing Them

Sen. Mark Kirk wants the head of VA Mental Health fired? Ok, but what had the Senate or the House done after all the complaints came in over the years going back to when this started in 2007?

Senator to VA: Fire your mental health director
Military Times
By Patricia Kime
February 22, 2016

Illinois Republican Sen. Mark Kirk has called on the VA to fire its mental health director after an investigation found that calls made to the department’s suicide hotline went unanswered.

In a letter to VA Secretary Bob McDonald on Monday, Kirk, who chairs the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees Veteran Affairs Department spending, said Dr. Mary Schohn should lose her job over problems at the Veterans Crisis Line, which include veterans being placed on hold or sent to voicemail.

VA officials have said the problems stemmed from routing calls to backup centers when the New York based line was overloaded.

Employees at the backup centers were unaware they had a voice mail system, according to the report. Investigators also raised concerns over staff training and the qualifications and training of backup center personnel.

VA officials said Wednesday improvements have been underway at the hotline since early 2015 and more are planned. They also said they would implement the recommendations of the VA IG by the end of the fiscal year.
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Perhaps the biggest question is, if all these veterans were calling the crisis line, then why do we keep losing them to suicide?

"The volume of calls to the crisis line increased 30 percent over the course of just one year, from 287,070 in 2013 to 374,053 in 2014, while the backup centers saw a 112 percent increase, from 36,261 in 2013 to 76,887 in 2014."

Think about that for a second. Actually the numbers would be even higher and that is the most important factor in all of this especially when you consider all the "awareness" raisers running around the country talking about the problem and asking for money.  Too bad they never talk about the solutions at the same time they haven't even put in enough thought to discover the simple fact they don't have a clue what the real number is.

Department of Veterans Affairs Suicide Report
To date, data from twenty-one (21) states have been cleaned and entered into a single integrated file containing information on more than 147,000 suicides and 27,062 reported Veterans.

In addition to the issues identified above, barriers to full project implementation include inconsistent availability of requested information in all states, barriers to providing non resident data and sending preference to provide de-identified data due to conflicting interpretations of Social Security laws. Negotiations with states are continuing as we begin requesting more recent years’ data as well as renewing or revising previously completed Data Use Agreements.

The ability of death certificates to fully capture female Veterans was particularly low; only 67% of true female Veterans were identified. Younger or unmarried Veterans and those with lower levels of education were also more likely to be missed on the death certificate.  

This decreased sensitivity in specific subgroups can affect both suicide surveillance and research efforts that utilize Veteran status on the death certificate. From a surveillance standpoint, the rate of Veteran suicides will be underestimated in these groups.

According to data provided by the United States Census Bureau, 93% of all Veterans are male and 21% of all males aged 18 years and older have history of U.S. military service.

When this is pointed out to them, they snap back with "it's just a number" insisting on using it because "it's easy to remember" but they seem to have forgotten, they were not just numbers they don't have to really think about. They were sons, daughters, husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, parents and friends. If they didn't bother to read the whole report, that pretty much sums up how much effort they put into learning before they started talking.

All In The Family, Soldier Saves "Brother" In Afghanistan Marries Sister in Florida

Soldier Marries Sister of Man He Saved in Afghanistan: 'It's Such an Amazing Love Story'
PEOPLE
BY MICHELLE BOUDIN
02/23/2016

Samantha Dilberian and Staff Sgt. Chris St. Onge on their wedding day

RICHARD HARRELL PHOTOGRAPHY

Samantha Dilberian and Staff Sgt. Chris St. Onge of Tampa, Florida, say they didn't realize how special their love story was until they actually had to put it down on paper so that they could apply to win a dream wedding.

"We live it, so we don't really think about it," Samantha, 26, tells PEOPLE. "But everyone seems to have the same reaction, everybody thinks it's just such an amazing story."

St. Onge, 27, served in Afghanistan with Samantha's brother, Bryan Dilberian. The two were on a routine patrol in July 2011 with the rest of their squad when an explosion shocked them all.
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Arrest Made After Murder of Iraq Veteran Jesse Lee Richards

Police: Man murdered Iraq war vet at bus stop, then watched investigators 
BY NEWS 4 SAN ANTONIO 
FEBRUARY 23RD 2016 

SAN ANTONIO - Investigators have arrested a man in connection the bus stop murder of an Iraq war veteran.

SAPD says Daniel Jeremy Torres, 19, shot and killed an Iraq war veteran who was waiting at a bus stop on December 20, 2015. (Photo: Bexar County Sheriff's Office)

According to arrest papers, Daniel Jeremy Torres, Jr. lives across the street from the spot where he shot 28-year-old Jesse Lee Richards just days before Christmas.

At the time, police said Richards had just gotten off work at the Texas Road House off Southeast Military Drive and was waiting at a bus stop. He served in Iraq and had been working at the restaurant for three days.

"He had a box of food in his hand and he was headed home. That's what makes this all the more disturbing that someone could just be sitting there waiting for the bus, and have somebody approach and shoot them," said Jesse Salame with the San Antonio Police Department.
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So Many Casualties Beyond Suicide of Australian Police Officer

Husband of policewoman who took her own life slams police, says death was avoidable 
ABC Australia 
By the National Reporting Team's Lorna Knowles 
February 23, 2016

"There are so many casualties in this story. It goes beyond [her] death."

The husband of a policewoman who took her own life has spoken out about the way his wife was treated by the New South Wales police service.

An inquest has heard the sergeant, known as "Officer A", had an affair with a senior ranking officer the year before she died.

New South Wales Deputy Coroner Hugh Dillon has criticised the police service over its handling of her case but has suppressed the names of all those involved, including a senior ranking officer who had a brief affair with the woman in 2012.

Her husband, who can only be known as "F", said the police service mismanaged her depression and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which were diagnosed as work-related injuries.

"There are so many casualties in this story. It goes beyond [her] death," he told the ABC.
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Demand for mental health support for police officers is on the rise