Man Risked Life to Save Veteran and Wife in Las Vegas

Veteran talks to man who shielded him, dying wife, after Vegas shooting
KWTX 10 News
Julie Hays
October 5, 2017

WACO, Texas (KWTX) An Army veteran whose wife of 32 years was killed in the Las Vegas shooting rampage heads home Friday, but not before he talked to the stranger who shielded him and his dying wife as shots rang out.

“It was a selfless act of kindness,” Tony Burditus said Thursday.

His wife Denise was among the 58 who died when Stephen Paddock opened fire on the crowd at the Route 91 Harvest Festival Sunday night on the Las Vegas Strip.

Burditus will fly back to West Virginia Friday after the Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office released his wife’s body.

But before he left Las Vegas he had an emotional phone conversation with the stranger who threw himself on top of the couple as bullets flew.

Sam Porter, a CPA from California, was attending the three-day music festival outside the Mandalay Bay hotel with 15 friends, mostly Los Angeles firefighters, when bullets began to rain down around them.

As news organizations began to identify the shooting victims and showed photographs, Porter immediately recognized Denise.
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Man Accused Of Impersonating Wounded Veteran...Again

‘He’s Despicable’: Man Accused Of Impersonating Wounded Veteran
CBS Boston
David Robichaud
October 5, 2017

“This guy wants uniforms so much, we gave him one. An orange uniform.” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd

AYER (CBS) – “He’s despicable.” That’s what the Ayer police chief called 27-year-old Kyle Barwan.

Police say Barwan is a con artist who travels the country convincing women he is a disabled veteran, then steals money from them.

“He referenced himself as a disabled vet,” said Ayer Police Chief William Murray. “What he does is he gets into these women’s houses, homes, he takes all their money, and then he moves on.”
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High Speed Chase Started at Joint Base Lewis McChord

Police: Wash. man who threatened 'Vegas-style assault' was driving 120 mph

KATU 2 News
Bob Heye
October 6, 2017

Authorities also said Bleavins "was suicidal, had a head injury and PTSD," the acronym for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Bleavins is retired from the US Army.

KELSO, Wash. — Police say a Washington man who led police on a high-speed chase down Interstate 5 Wednesday and threatened a "Vegas-style assault" was driving in excess of 120 miles per hour. The chase began around 4 p.m. at Joint Base Lewis-McChord military installation south of Tacoma and ended near Kelso.

According to court documents, military police at the base said 35-year-old Christopher Bleavins was "threatening a Vegas style assault" when he fled, almost hitting officers on his way out.

Cowlitz County Sheriff's deputies picked up the chase as it headed south on I-5 near Kelso, Bleavins' car dodging in and out of freeway traffic, sometimes slamming on its breaks in front of other drivers then speeding off again, according to authorities.
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Volunteers Building Veterans Homes and Healing

United Way Day of Action offers helping hand around the county

Frederick News Post

Cameron Dodd

October 6, 2017

“Building Veterans and finding the Lord have been the biggest blessings in my life. They’ve supported me and given me a chance to become part of the community, of society. That’s what I needed. My tendency was to say I can handle everything on my own. But that’s the lie I was telling myself.” Ray Nickleson

Volunteers from AstraZeneca do landscaping work on a house for homeless men in Brunswick on Friday as part of the United Way’s 2017 Day of Action.
News-Post photo by Cameron Dodd 

More than 300 volunteers worked on dozens of projects around the county on Friday as part of the United Way of Frederick County’s sixth annual Day of Action.

The volunteers worked an estimated 1,802 service hours combined, according to Shana Knight, United Way of Frederick County’s community engagement manager.

“We’re grateful for all the work they’ve done and hope we can get them to join us again,” said Bob Wyatt, executive director of the Brunswick nonprofit organization Building Veterans. Wyatt’s program was joined by 25 volunteers Friday to help clean up and landscape a house that seven homeless men will move into later this year.

“It’s been a really great help,” he said. 
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Fourth Fort Bragg Green Beret Found After Niger Ambush

Fourth US Soldier Was Killed in Niger Ambush

FOX News
Lucas Tomlinson
October 6, 2017

Nigerien forces have discovered the body of a fourth U.S. soldier killed in an ambush earlier this week, U.S. officials told Fox News Friday.

The unidentified soldier had initially been reported missing after Wednesday's attack. Authorities feared the soldier was being held hostage by a militant group, but officials told Fox there were no signs the soldier had been kidnapped or tortured.

The other three fallen Green Berets were identified earlier Friday as decorated soldiers based out of Fort Bragg, N.C.

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Amputee 94-year-old World War II Veteran Stands for National Anthem!

Missing leg won't keep 94-year-old veteran from standing for national anthem

The Buffalo News 
By LOU MICHEL 
October 5, 2017

Marian Morreale, a Coast Guard veteran, was honored during the national anthem at the Buffalo Sabres home opener on Friday, October 6 2017.SCREENSHOT VIA NHL

Marian Morreale has been practicing how to stand for the last three months. She is a 94-year-old World War II veteran and her left leg was amputated last year.

But she practiced standing so that she could when the national anthem  opening game of the Sabres tonight.

She is trying to make a point.

"I think for these young athletes and the salaries they make, they should stand for the national anthem," she said. "But I don't think our president should use that word, SOB." 
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Widow of Fallen Fort Bragg Solider Has Enormous Gender Reveal Announcement

82nd Airborne in Afghanistan helps with gender reveal for fallen NC soldier

CBS 

North Carolina

October 6, 2017

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) – The wife of a fallen Fort Bragg soldier had a little help learning the gender of her unborn child.

U.S. Army Spc. Christopher Harris, 25, was killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan on August 2. His wife, Brittany, was pregnant at the time of his death.

But his fellow 82nd Airborne members helped Brittany with learning the gender of her child.

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Army of Heroes Showed Up in Las Vegas

Here are a few more stories about veterans still risking their lives for the sake of others!

Matthew Cobos, US Army

Cobos used his belt as a tourniquet to stop bleeding and even used his fingers to try to plug wounds. Cobos told family and friends that he could see the shots hitting the ground and ricocheting around him.

The young soldier is stationed with the Army in Hawaii where he is a cavalry scout. He was at the Route 91 Harvest Festival with his sister and her boyfriend during the shooting, and is for the time being back with his family in California.

Dr. James Sebesta, Ret. Army

is a surgeon who retired last year from service at Madigan Army Medical Center after an Army career that included four deployments to combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sunday, he encountered some of the worst carnage of his career during what he called a “prolonged date night” as he attended the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas. After surviving the onslaught of bullets unleashed in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, he sent his wife away with friends to a safe place while he stayed behind to help the wounded.

Aaron Stalker, Army veteran

While thousands of people scrambled from the parking lot where the Route 91 Harvest music festival was held as bullets rained down from overhead, Stalker ran straight into the crowd. He searched frantically for his girlfriend and her mother. Unable to find them in the chaos, "I just started helping anyone and everyone I could," Stalker said. 

He went to the first wounded person he could find and ripped up a piece of clothing to use as a tourniquet. He made splints, patched bullet holes, flipped over the plastic barriers that had been set up around the perimeter of the festival and turned them into stretchers. With two other men whose names he never learned, he carried the wounded to cars that would take them to the hospital.

Robert Ledbetter, Army veteran 

was a scout sniper for the U.S. Army Rangers during one tour of duty in Iraq. He was trained for war.

Those instincts kicked in on Sunday night at a different battlefield: about 40 yards from the stage where Jason Aldean was performing.

Ledbetter, 42, now a loan officer in Las Vegas, said at first it sounded like a firecracker or a firework. “We all looked around,” he said, as he and his wife and family members made sense of the popping sound.

Another burst of rounds went off, and someone about four rows ahead at the concert dropped to the ground. He saw Aldean escorted from the stage.

After Hurricane Maria, The Flood of PTSD Cases

Two suicides counted in Puerto Rico's hurricane death toll

CBS News

October 5, 2017

As time goes on, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may also become an issue for many. 

"PTSD doesn't develop immediately, it develops after about a month," Asim Shah, M.D., chief of the division of community psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine, told CBS News.

A resident walks down the dark hallway of a senior citizens' condo building with no electricity in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Sept. 30, 2017.

 

 JOE RAEDLE / GETTY IMAGES

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Locked out of his home and with nowhere else to go, Wilfredo Ortiz Marrero rode out Hurricane Maria inside a Jeep, which was lifted off its wheels by floodwaters in the parking lot. He then endured days without enough food or running water.

The lights are back on at his residence for low-income elderly people in the San Juan suburb of Trujillo Alto, and food has started arriving, but he still waits as long as he can each night to leave the company of others in the lobby. Alone in his room, he sometimes starts to shake.

"You get really depressed," he said Wednesday.

The hurricane that pummeled Puerto Rico two weeks ago and the scarcity-marked aftermath are taking a toll on islanders' equilibrium. The U.S. territory's government counted two suicides among the death toll, which now stands at 34, and with many communities still waiting for power and clean water, there is concern about others reaching a breaking point. 
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Las Vegas Survivors and Responders Struggle to Heal

Las Vegas survivors have been through hell. And it's not over.
USA TODAY
Anne Godlasky
Published Oct. 5, 2017

"Most people who've gone through something this horrifying will have symptoms that look like PTSD initially. It's only when they continue to linger that a diagnosis would be given," Gillihan said. Though rates of PTSD vary depending on the trauma, Gillihan said he would expect a "high percentage" to experience it in this case.

Now is about the time you've got Las Vegas fatigue. For the sake of your sanity, you turn your attention to other things, lighter things.

Now is about the time survivors of that attack are beginning to feel the shock subside and an onslaught of emotions — anguish, grief, guilt — take over.

"There's national recognition and solidarity around these big events, (but) that sense of attention and care and compassion seems to fade with the next news cycle," said Seth Gillihan, a psychologist and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder researcher. "The country pretty quickly returns to its baseline."

But survivors can't return to their baseline. Those who escaped the bullets can go home, and the injured will leave the hospital, but they can't go back to the lives they had.

"The world they knew before it happened is profoundly changed," Gillihan said. "They're probably going to have a different way of seeing the world, they may have a different way of seeing themselves, they may be critical of themselves for how they reacted during the event."

Las Vegas survivors have been thrust onto a new trajectory, one that will feel worse before it gets better. They are joining an unfortunate fellowship of those who've endured trauma — but one that can at least provide guidance down this too well-trodden path.
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I hope you read the rest of the article because it is important to understand that the rest of the country moved on.

Everyone shot, obviously needs help. Not so obvious are the other concert goers. Even less obvious are the First Responders trying to save everyone else.

After Pulse, Police Officers said that the worst part was after the shooting stopped. They had to walk around in puddles of blood, but even that wasn't the worst for them. It was the constant ring of cell phones as they prayed the batteries would die. They knew on the other end of the call, was someone looking for someone who was not going home to them.