Army Veteran Shot In Back After Baseball Game

Army Veteran Shot in the Back after Baseball Game May Never Walk Again
Fox News
Sep 29, 2015

An Army vet may never walk again after he was shot in the back while leaving a St. Louis Cardinals home game on Friday.

Candis Sanna, left, and Christopher Sanna in a picture from the family's 

GoFundMe page to help pay for Christopher's medical bills. (GoFundMe)

Christopher Sanna, 43, was struck in his liver, spine and lungs, according to KMOV. His mother, Candis Sanna, posted on a GoFundMe page on Sunday that "surgeons have confirmed that his spinal injury cannot be repaired."

"They said he could eventually get a little feeling back, but there was no hope for him to walk," Candis Sanna told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "It’s horrible."

Christopher Sanna was attending the game against the Brewers with his three brothers to celebrate his mom’s 60th birthday. But he had to work Saturday morning at his job as the manager of an automotive store, and so he left the game early, with his girlfriend, while the rest of his family stayed to watch the final inning. As Sanna walked back to his car around 10:30 p.m., two armed male suspects in a black sedan confronted him and his girlfriend.

"After she gave him her purse, [one perpetrator] pulled a gun," Candis Sanna told KMOV. "That’s when they turned to run, and he shot at them twice."

Sanna served six years in the Army, stationed in Germany, according to the Post-Dispatch.
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Mayor, police pledge more officers near Busch Stadium after shooting

Chris Sanna, second from right, poses for a family photo with his mother and brothers at a Cardinals game on Friday, Sept. 25, 2015. He was shot during a robbery after leaving the game. Family photo.

Army Reserve Captains Attacked Outside Restaurant

UPDATE: Army captain assaulted on Plaza out of hospital, back at Ft. Leavenworth
He is at Leavenworth for 12-week course
KSHB 41 News Kansas City
Shain Bergan, Nick Sloan
Sep 26, 2015

The man punched the soldier, according to police. The other five individuals then piled on and began punching and kicking the soldier while he was on the ground.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - UPDATE, 9/28: The Army captain who suffered serious injuries after being assaulted on the Country Club Plaza on Sept. 19 was released from the hospital Monday. He is back at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., being examined by on-base medical crews, according to officials there.

The 37-year-old man was admitted at St. Luke's hospital in Kansas City after being jumped by six assailants outside of the Zocalo Mexican restaurant on the Plaza in Kansas City, Mo. Another Army captain he was with was also assaulted, but was treated at the scene and released, according to Fort Leavenworth officials.

Both captains serve in the Army Reserve with the 151st Theater Information Operations Group at Fort Totten, New York. They are at Fort Leavenworth for a 12-week qualification course

Officials said the severely injured captain met with family at the base and was released from on-base medical care Monday.
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Veteran Navy SEAL Wants Top Job As Missouri Governor

Former Navy SEAL Greitens running for Missouri governor
The Associated Press
By Alan Scher Zagier and Summer Ballentine
September 28, 2015

MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. — Former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens, a political newcomer who was once courted to run for Congress as a Democrat, on Saturday launched a Republican campaign for Missouri governor in 2016.

Eric Greitens

Former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens smiles at a rally where he announced his candidacy into the

2016 race for Missouri governor onSept. 26, 2015, at Westport Plaza in Maryland Heights, Mo.

(Photo: uy Mach/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP)

Greitens, 41, is already the top fundraiser in a crowded GOP field thanks to an exploratory campaign committee that's raised more than $1 million in recent months, boosting his total haul to more than $2 million.

He touted both his military background and lack of political pedigree before a crowd of several hundred supporters at an announcement in suburban St. Louis near his childhood home.

"I'm running for governor because we need a political outsider to move Missouri forward," Greitens said. "We have a political class of corrupt consultants, well-paid lobbyists, and career politicians who have been in Jefferson City for decades. They have produced nothing for us but embarrassment and failure."

Greitens grew up in St. Louis County, was a Rhodes Scholar after graduation from Duke University, served in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and as White House fellow. He's written three books that combine stories of his military service and humanitarian work with lessons on leadership. He founded the nonprofit group The Mission Continues, which connects veterans with volunteer work to ease the post-military transition.

He drew the loudest cheers with a call to extend term limits to all statewide offices and ban lobbyist gifts to state lawmakers.

"I will defeat you, I will expose your lies, I will root out your corruption, and I will see you out of the people's Capitol," said Greitens, adding his own lifetime pledge to never lobby government.
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Air Force Media Heading Home After 7th Deployment

After 7 overseas deployments, Air Force medic looks forward to going home
Herald-Times (Tribune News Service)
By Laura Lane
Published: September 27, 2015

He also served on humanitarian missions twice, to help fight wildfires in California in 2007 and to help victims of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

Matt Scott's world is defined by 15-foot-high cement walls, steel doors, guards with assault rifles, armored Humvees, suicide bombers and vehicle-borne explosives.

It's a short distance to work every day, but he gets transported in a helicopter. It's safer than driving on sabotaged roads in the deserts of Afghanistan, where a thin layer of gray, silt-like dust covers everything in sight and danger lurks always.

When winter cold sets in, air quality deteriorates. "It gets wet and humid and dreary and snowy," the U.S. Air Force master sergeant from Ellettsville, Ind., said. "The people here burn literally everything to stay warm, and the pollution gets very bad."

Six thousand feet above sea level and 7,673 miles from home, the 38-year-old Monroe County native and flight medic is serving out the end of a two-decade military career during which he has been deployed overseas seven times.
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Philadelphia VA Executives Abused Positions For Financial Gain

Report: Senior VA executives abused positions for financial gain
Stars and Stripes
By Heath Druzin
Published: September 28, 2015

WASHINGTON — A senior Department of Veterans Affairs manager hired to clean up a beleaguered regional office in Philadelphia misused her position to create the very vacancy she volunteered for as part of a wider scheme by VA officials to give stealth raises to executives, according to a VA Office of Inspector General report.

Diana Rubens, director of the

Department of Veterans Affairs'

Philadelphia regional office,

is sworn in at a House hearing

in April, 2015.

JOE GROMELSKI/STARS AND STRIPES

The Office of Inspector General had been investigating Philadelphia VA Regional Office Director Diana Rubens since March, after it became known that she had received nearly $300,000 in compensation to move about 140 miles from Washington to Philadelphia. While the Inspector General’s office concluded that her moving expenses were allowable, it found she and one other executive had manipulated the VA hiring system to both create vacancies they sought for financial gain in an era of government pay freezes.

The Inspector General has made a criminal referral to the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney’s Office for actions by Rubens and St. Paul (Minn.) Director Kimberly Graves, who is accused of a similar scheme to become director of the St. Paul Veterans Affairs Regional Office. No charges have been filed.

Rubens and Graves retained their salaries, $181,497 and $173,949, respectively, despite taking new positions with fewer responsibilities at lower rungs on the federal pay scale. Together they received about $400,000 in moving expenses.
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Congress Sold Out Veterans Care Years Ago

Congress Sold Out Veterans Care Years Ago
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 28, 2015

Just because you may think the VA is behind all the problems, doesn't make it true. The truth is, contractors have been paid a boatload of money to do what you assume VA employees are doing.

There is a great article on Stars and Stripes about whistleblowers Investigator questions VA discipline of whistleblowers from the Washington Post out today.

There are a lot more cases listed but I wanted to make sure you knew about this part.

Brandon Coleman, a therapist and decorated veteran at the VA hospital in Phoenix, the epicenter of last year's scandal. He urgently warned that there was a broader problem with how suicidal patients were being handled.

Five suicidal veterans had walked out of the emergency room without getting help during a single week in January, he told his supervisor. Six days after he spoke with his boss, Coleman recalled, he was suspended from his job. He believes it was in retaliation.

If you haven't heard much about Contractors vs VA Employees, you may have heard about Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General. You can read a lot there about some of the shenanigans going on.

Like this one that came out September 2, 2015

A Statement from the Deputy Inspector General
VA OIG Substantiates Whistleblower’s Claims of Extensive, Persistent Problems in Veterans Health Care Enrollment Records

Washington, DC – The Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General (OIG) received a request from the Chairman of the U.S House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs to determine the merits of allegations made by a whistleblower about the Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) Health Eligibility Center (HEC).

The OIG found the Chief Business Office has not effectively managed its business processes to ensure the consistent creation and maintenance of essential data and recommended a multiyear project management plan to address the accuracy of pending Enrollment System records to improve the usefulness of such data.

The OIG published a report http://www.va.gov/oig/pubs/VAOIG-14-01792-510.pdf on September 2, 2015, addressing the following four questions:

 Did the HEC have a backlog of 889,000 health care applications in a pending status?
 Did 47,000 veterans die while their health care applications were in a pending status?
 Were over 10,000 veteran health records purged or deleted at the HEC?
 Were 40,000 unprocessed applications, spanning a 3-year time period, discovered in January 2013?

We substantiated the first allegation that VHA’s enrollment system had about 867,000 pending records as of September 30, 2014. However, due to serious enrollment data limitations, such as an estimated 477,000 pending records not having application dates, we could not reliably determine how many records were associated with actual applications for enrollment.

OIG also substantiated that pending records included entries for over 307,000 individuals reported as deceased by the Social Security Administration. Again because of data limitations, we could not determine how many pending records represent veterans who applied for health care benefits.

We also substantiated that employees incorrectly marked unprocessed applications as completed and possibly deleted 10,000 or more transactions over the past 5 years. Information security deficiencies, such as the lack of audit trails and system backups, limited our ability to review some issues fully and rule out data manipulation.

Finally, we substantiated that the HEC identified over 11,000 unprocessed health care applications and about 28,000 other transactions in January 2013. This backlog developed because the HEC did not adequately manage its workload and lacked controls to ensure entry of its workload into the enrollment system.

Then there is another link to FedBizOpps.gov that list the contracts for some things like building and equipment but then there are also others like this one.

Q--NEW IDIQ CONTRACT: FUNDING REQUIRED | Medical Disability Exams (MDE) under P.L. 104-275 | VBA Compensation Service | RFQ # VA119A-15-Q-0130

So if you think these are VA employees doing everything that is wrong, keep in mind that a lot of the times what you think is not always true. Next time you hear a politician talk about turning veterans care over to companies operating for profit instead of for veterans, remember this. They already turned too much over to corporations including processing claims.

Harris Corporation Awarded $37 Million Contract to Improve Veterans’ Benefit Claims Process

Under a four-year, $37-million contract, Harris will provide the VBA’s Office of Performance Analysis and Integrity with technical services for the data warehouse including design, development, enhancement, integration, implementation, maintenance and infrastructure support.

VA claims processing contract allows Virginia Beach firm to add 150 jobs

AFGE officials also said that a recent $54 million contract awarded by the Veterans Benefits Administration for claims processing would result in lost jobs for many veterans currently performing that work at the VA.

Here's a contractor talking about what he supplies for the DOD and the VA
Just a taste of how much money is involved, this is about the Air Force but then there are other contracts with other branches as well as the VA and even Warrior Transition Units which we heard a lot about from the Dallas Morning News.

September 2006 - Luke and Associates Awarded $1.9 Billion Contract to Provide Clinical Support Services to the U.S. Air Force

Luke and Associates has been awarded a contract to provide Clinical Support Services for Air Force Medical Treatment Facilities nationwide. This contract has a potential value of $1.9 billion over 10 years. Luke will recruit, qualify and retain clinical personnel of all levels, including physicians, dentists, nurses and pharmacists to provide care at a total of 63 Military Treatment Facilities in 58 geographic locations.

Missing In American Lost Another Veteran Escorting Remains

Crash kills motorcyclist escorting veteran's body, hurt 3 
Des Moines Register
Charly Haley
September 27, 2015

One motorcyclist died and three others were injured Saturday in Iowa when a car crashed into motorcyclists escorting the body of a veteran killed in a similar accident earlier this month.

The crash happened about 1 p.m. on Interstate Highway 80, near Atlantic, when nearly 125 motorcyclists and other vehicles were escorting veteran Bill Henry's cremated remains home to Omaha from the Freedom Rock landmark in western Iowa.

The Iowa State Patrol said Donald Kerby, 81, of Des Moines struck a motorcycle when he changed lanes to avoid a trailer parked on the road's shoulder. Ryan Lossing, 38, of Omaha died, and three other riders were hurt.

Henry was killed after a similar crash near Manassas, Va., earlier this month. The 69-year-old Army veteran died Sept. 14, two weeks after suffering head injuries from a crash that happened as he helped escort six West Coast veterans' remains to Arlington National Cemetery for burial.

Henry co-founded and helped lead the Nebraska chapter of the Missing in America Project, which works with funeral homes to return unclaimed remains of veterans to family members and arrange for military burials.

"It's a tragedy. They (Henry and Lossing) both went before their time," said Larry Schaber, a friend of Henry's who co-founded Nebraska's Missing in America Project chapter with him.
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Major Veterans Groups Come Out Against Killing VA

Carson’s ideas to reform VA concern local veterans
Midland Reporter Telegram
By Erin Stone
Sep 27, 2015

The DAV and other national organizations -- American Legion, AMVETS, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans, Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, Paralyzed Veterans of American, Military Order of the Purple Heart and Military Officers Association of America -- signed and sent an open letter to Carson in response to his ideas for reforming the VA.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has encountered much criticism given the sometimes fatal consequences of its long waiting lists. However, Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson’s recent comments about moving veterans’ health care partially into the privatized realm has veterans -- including those who are well aware of the flaws of the current VA -- up in arms.

In an op-ed published last week in USA Today, Carson described improving the VA with what he called “offer choice,” which would give veterans a health savings account (HSA) “to allow veterans to access the best possible medical care at a nearby DOD, VA or civilian medical facility.”

Leaders of veterans’ organizations worry that this will lead to the complete privatization of veterans’ health care and the eventual elimination of the department altogether, especially given Carson’s comments in an August radio interview stating the VA doesn’t need to exist, said Paul Reed, commander and Service Officer for the Permian Basin Chapter of Disabled American Veterans.

Reed believes the new Veterans Choice Program is a concrete example of this incremental movement toward fully privatizing the VA. Through the Choice Program, eligible veterans are sent a Choice Card with which they are allowed to seek covered care outside of the VA if their wait time is more than 30 days or the closest VA is more than 40 miles away from their home.
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UK Military Uniform Is "Upsetting" At Queen Mother Hospital?

Hospital told RAF sergeant to leave waiting room in case his uniform upset other patients
THE DAILY MAIL
By JOSH WHITE
PUBLISHED:25 September 2015

Aircraft engineer Mark Prendeville at The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate
Staff moved him to sit in a corner before asking him to sit behind a wall
Family claim they were told it was as they 'didn't want to upset' anyone
Say explanation added that A and E had 'lots of cultures coming in' and staff were worried about his uniform

Mark Prendeville’s (pictured on his wedding day) treatment was condemned as ‘horrifying’ by military figures and Air Force veterans – but follows a string of incidents in recent years where service personnel were snubbed because of their uniform

An RAF sergeant who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan was moved out of a hospital waiting room because staff feared his uniform would upset people from different cultures, it was reported.

Aircraft engineer Mark Prendeville’s treatment was condemned as ‘horrifying’ by military figures and Air Force veterans – but follows a string of incidents in recent years where service personnel were snubbed because of their uniform.

Sergeant Prendeville, 38, was taken to the A and E department at Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate, Kent, after chemicals from a fire extinguisher got in to his eyes during a training exercise. He was then taken to an empty corner of the waiting room before being moved behind a corner by hospital staff, The Sun reported.

In an explanation to his family, hospital workers were said to have claimed ‘they didn’t want to upset people’ because they ‘have lots of different cultures coming in’.

Sergeant Prendeville’s father, Jim, said: ‘Mark was moved because of his uniform – he was told that twice. The words they used were: “We’ve lots of cultures coming in”.

‘Mark was quite annoyed, but he’s a quiet lad and didn’t want to cause a fuss.’

Mr Prendeville added: ‘He didn’t care about the burns, he felt worse about how he was treated. I was absolutely disgusted when I heard. I don’t know what is so offensive about a uniform.’

Veterans and military figures condemned Sergeant Prendeville’s treatment. Former Chief of the Air Staff Sir Michael Graydon described the incident as ‘disappointing’.
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Combat Medic Florida National Guardsman Paying Price for 9-11

If you forgot about 9-11-2001, there were a lot of folks rushing to do whatever they could to help the survivors and find whatever remains they could. One of them was an Army National Guardsman from right here in Florida. Reading his story and what happened to him, it only seemed right to put into context what he did back then. This is from Tampa Tribune great report by Howard Altman.

Garrett Goodwin was a medic, working in the emergency room at Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg, in September 2001.

On Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, he was in bed, watching TV before an afternoon shift, when he saw what turned out to be United Flight 175 hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

Goodwin, a combat medic with the Army National Guard who had experience in disaster recover efforts, says he packed his bag, hopped in his truck and drove down to MacDill Air Force Base, hoping to catch a flight north to help during the unfolding catastrophe.

But nothing was flying anywhere. So he and a friend drove north, toward the Pentagon.

“We did rescue work for three or four hours, but there was no one to save, so we went to New York,” Goodwin says.

They arrived about 6:30 a.m., Sept. 12. Goodwin says he checked in with the military authorities on scene, they told him what he could do, and he was given a “red card” allowing him access.

For the next 24 days, he worked between 18 and 20 hours in what used to be the tallest building in America. It had become a mass grave.

So how did he end up this way?

Tampa man ill just now from help he gave at Ground Zero
Tampa Tribune
By Howard Altman
Tribune Staff
Published: September 27, 2015

Garrett Goodwin is a casualty of al-Qaida’s war against the U.S.

Shortly after the jihadi organization turned aircraft into weapons, obliterating the World Trade Center in New York, hitting the Pentagon and crashing into a Pennsylvania field, Goodwin made the trip from Florida to Manhattan to help recovery efforts. He spent more than three weeks in the smouldering pile of twisted beams that was once the World Trade Center — the place where Pope Francis on Friday summoned the world to “unity over hatred.”

Now, Goodwin is paying the price.

It includes a stay, since last Tuesday, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he is desperately seeking help for the maladies he believes are a result of his time at Ground Zero.

Finally, after a health scare that started on the 14th anniversary of the attacks, Goodwin realized he needed greater medical attention.

There are many others like him — first responders who have became casualties of war by dint of their time searching the wreckage, first for survivors, then for remains.

Every day, there are more Garrett Goodwins, coming forward seeking help.
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