Tag: shooting

Here we go again with another crazy guy committing a mass shooting:

The man police say opened fire with a gun from his checked baggage at a Florida airport had a history of mental health issues — some of which followed his military service in Iraq — and was receiving psychological treatment at his home in Alaska, his relatives said Friday after the deadly shooting.

“Only thing I could tell you was when he came out of Iraq, he wasn’t feeling too good,” his uncle, Hernan Rivera, told The Record newspaper.

Esteban Santiago, 26, deployed in 2010 as part of the Puerto Rico National Guard, spending a year with an engineering battalion, according to Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen.  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link, but we have heard this claim before of service in Iraq or Afghanistan being the reason someone committed a crime to find out later they were a Fobbit that never saw active combat.  I won’t believe his service in Iraq had anything to do with him committing this crime until I hear what his service record was in Iraq.  There is actually a pretty good chance he did not see active combat considering the timeframe he was in Iraq in 2010-2011 was when the pullout happened.

Additionally according to what the media has reported so far all he received from his Iraq deployment was a Iraq Campaign Medal and a Global War on Terrorism Service Medal which everyone gets.  If he was participating in active combat you would think he would have received at least an AAM or ARCOM plus a Combat Action Badge.  Based on the information currently available I would not be surprised if Santiago’s mental issues are unrelated to his military service.

The incident that got the Dallas police shooter discharged from the Army has been disclosed; he stole panties from his officer girl friend in his reserve unit:

But two soldiers who knew Johnson in Afghanistan, who were reached and interviewed separately, said it was an open secret that the pair had a romantic relationship and were publicly affectionate.

In an interview with TheBlaze website, Johnson’s mother, Delphene, implied they were more than friends.

“Before, when they went to drill, during the drill weekends, she stayed here,” she said. “Yeah, they slept in the same bed.”

Gilbert Fischbach, a former Army sergeant who was Johnson’s squad leader, says that the woman has denied being intimate with Johnson and that he believes the two were just close friends.

But, he said, the nature of their relationship doesn’t matter — he was found with her underwear without her permission.  [Dallas Morning News]

After the incident Johnson was supposedly ostracized from his unit and eventually moved to a different base.  When it comes to a sex crime accusation in the Army of course few people are going to want to be associated with someone accused of that crime; especially one caught in the act.  Here is where the reporter states that the ostracizing of Johnson led to him hanging out with “black people”:

“Everybody thought that he was just a person that stole panties,” a soldier said. “He broke down after that a little bit because they ostracized him. All of his friends started unfollowing him on Facebook. They wouldn’t deal with him, they wouldn’t talk to him.”

“He started hanging out with people he usually didn’t hang out with — the black people, honestly,” said the soldier, who is black.

So what is this passage supposed to mean?  That him hanging out with other black people led to him becoming a racist killer? That if he didn’t hang out with other so called “black people” that the killings would not have happened?  I also find it hard to believe he was not hanging out with so called “black people” before this incident happened.  Notice how the reporter had to specify that the quoted person was black; this was intentional because the reporter does not want to be accused of passing on a racist statement if a white guy was quoted as making that statement.

Johnson was discharged for the panty incident in Afghanistan and the article concludes with the reporter insinuating that the Army should have checked up on this guy despite him no longer being in the Army:

One of the soldiers interviewed by The News reported talking to Johnson about a year after they returned from Afghanistan.

“I was like, ‘How are you doing? Has anybody called to check up on you?'” the soldier recalls. “He said, ‘You’re the first person I’ve heard from in the unit.'”

This reporter doesn’t seem to understand that the Army has no obligation to check on Soldiers when they are no longer in the service.  Considering the amount of Soldiers that leave the Army every year this would be an impossibility anyway unless a large unit was stood up to do this.  This article seems like a lame attempt by the reporter to pass blame on to the Army for what happened in Dallas instead putting the responsibility solely on the person that committed the crime.

Here is yet another example of a mass shooter with possible mental issues:

For six years starting in 2009, Johnson served in the Army Reserve as a private first class with a specialty in carpentry and masonry, the military said.

In May 2014, six months into his Afghanistan tour, he was accused of sexual harassment by a female soldier. The Army sent him stateside, recommending an “other than honorable discharge,” said Bradford Glendening, the military lawyer who represented him.

That recommendation was “highly unusual,” Bradford said, since counseling is usually ordered before more drastic steps are taken.

“In his case, it was apparently so egregious, it was not just the act itself,” Glendening told The Associated Press. “I’m sure that this guy was the black sheep of his unit.”

According to a court filing Glendening read over the phone Friday, the victim said she wanted Johnson to “receive mental help,” while also seeking a protective order to keep him away from her and her family, wherever they went. Johnson was ordered to avoid all contact with her.

Glendening said Johnson was set to be removed from the Army in September 2014 because of the incident, but instead got an honorable discharge months later — for reasons he can’t understand.

“Someone really screwed up,” he said. “But to my client’s benefit.”  [Associated Press]

You can read more at the link, but just like the Orlando shooting it appears a guy with mental issues influenced by radical hate spread through mainstream and social media decided to take action at the urging of others.

This type of blue on blue shooting is unfortunately becoming a somewhat annual occurrence in the ROK Army:

Two died and three injured in what is believed to be a shooting spree at around 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday during a reserve forces training session at a military base located in Seocho District, southeastern Seoul.

The suspect, one of reserve forces trainees, is known to have killed himself with the weapon after the incident, according to the Army.

“During a zeroing fire session, a trainee fired a rifle at fellow soldiers which killed one and injured four others,” said an Army officer after the shooting spree. “Death toll may rise as well.”

The injured are being evacuated to the Armed Forces Capital Hospital. Two of the injured were in critical condition and one of them died after the Army’s announcement.

The Army is still on an internal investigation.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]