A soldier came home showing signs he needed help. A wife responded, asked for help for him, the way we always say families need to act. The military keeps saying they are there to help, have programs ready to help, chaplains ready to offer spiritual support and they take military suicides seriously. Everyone seems to have done all they could to help Sgt. Adrian Simmons heal, except the Army itself. He's dead. She's a widow. Will anyone be held accountable for letting all of this happen? No. No one has been held accountable for any of their suicides. Numbers go up, claims of taking all this seriously go up but no one gets justice for any of this.
Soldiers and suicide: Widow says despite pleas, help never came
By John Ramsey
Staff writer
Staff photo by James Robinson
Nicole Simmons' husband, Sgt. Adrian Simmons, died July 5 after he went into the garage of their Hoke County home and shot himself. She says he had suffered symptoms of PTSD.
"Simmons said that after her husband died July 5, soldiers told her the Army was opening an investigation into what happened. But she wasn't contacted for an interview until Wednesday, hours after the Observer sent an email to the 82nd Airborne Division asking why no one had talked with her."
Three months before her husband shot himself in the family's garage, Nicole Simmons said, she met with a chaplain and her husband's commanders at Fort Bragg.
Help me, and help my husband, Simmons said she told Lt. Col. Marcus Evans and Command Sgt. Maj. Herbert Kirkover.
Her husband, Sgt. Adrian Simmons, had changed, she said she told them.
Simmons, who is pregnant with their second child, thought he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He couldn't control his temper, and his memory was terrible, she said.
"I said, 'Something is wrong with my husband. He is saying he wants to blow his brains out. He is getting so short-tempered, so short-fused, anything will make him blow,' " Simmons said she told the commanders. "I said, 'I think he needs a psychological evaluation.' "
Soon after that meeting, the 24-year-old Simmons said, a soldier came to the family's Hoke County home to confiscate her husband's personal guns. Hoke County Child Protective Services visited and determined that the couple's 2-year-old son was safe as long as the guns remained out of the house.
But the Army never sent her husband to a counselor, Simmons said.
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Widow says despite pleas help never came