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DAYTON, Ohio – JESSE CHARLES HUFF
Jesse Charles Huff walked up to the Veterans Affairs Department’s Medical Center on Friday morning wearing U.S. Army fatigues and battling pain from his Iraq war wounds and a recent bout with depression.
The 27-year-old Dayton man had entered the center’s emergency room about 1 a.m. Friday and requested some sort of treatment. But Huff did not get that treatment, police said, and about 5:45 a.m. he reappeared at the center’s entrance, put a military-style rifle to his head and twice pulled the trigger.
Huff fell near the foot of a Civil War statue, his blood covering portions of the front steps.
An assault rifle lies in front of the Dayton VA Medical Center. (Staff photo Ron Alvey)
This broke my heart. I’m from Dayton and the story was all over the news here. He was troubled, yes, but he reached out for help and got none. I can’t imagine what his family is going through.
I will go ahead and throw politics into this: we need better care for our veterans. PTSD is not studied enough; I know of two veterans who still have serious residual problems from the time they served in Desert Storm and in Iraq. The Dayton VA provides care for many veterans of many wars and I’m sure they’re overwhelmed right now.
My condolences to this man’s family and friends. I wish he had been heard and helped before he felt the need to kill himself.
Oh, dear, yet again.
May Jesse’s family find comfort and solace from all of us who share this loss.
Rest in peace.
If the United States government insists upon sending young men and women to foreign lands to commit its crimes for it, they had damned well better be prepared to take proper care of them when they return broken from the experience.
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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) – They call him the angry guy now. Even his friends. And at this moment, on a snowy evening when he should be home, putting his son to bed, Andrew Pogany is, in fact, ticked off.
He sits with a soldier in a law office. The man has brought with him a pile of medical files, and another desperate story: Sent off to war to fight for his country. Diagnosed, now, with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Yet the Army, the soldier tells Pogany, is drawing up papers to discharge him in a way that could mean no medical benefits. And they want him out in three weeks.
The soldier confides he thinks about killing himself. All the time, he says.
Pogany makes sure he has his cell number.
Greenmonster, Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway / U.S. Air Force
Andrew Pogany and Nic Gray, embattled vets turned advocates
Pogany, a Fort Carson soldier, shipped out for Iraq in 2003 as part of a Special Forces team. After just a few days in the war zone, he suffered a mental breakdown. Pogany saw the shredded body of a gunned-down Iraqi. He had what he thought was a panic attack — vomiting, hallucinations so horrible his comrades looked like zombies. He went to his command, told them something was wrong. He says he got the “man up” response. When his superiors wouldn’t offer him help, he asked to be sent home. Later, doctors determined his breakdown had been caused by Lariam, a controversial anti-malaria drug given at the time to soldiers in Iraq. But by that point, the damage had already been done: The Army had charged Pogany with cowardice, a military crime that hadn’t been used to convict a soldier since 1968 — and one that was punishable by death.
Three years later, Gray was deployed to Iraq, and was there for the height of the no-holds-barred Surge campaign. Still, he made it home in one piece — or so he thought. He got out of the Army, moved to Colorado Springs and launched a successful business. But then, one October night in 2009, something snapped in his mind and he blacked out. When he came to, he was sitting in county jail and charged with felony trespassing and other crimes for kicking down the door of his neighbor’s house as if he were back in Iraq and hunting insurgents. While he couldn’t remember committing the crimes, he was looking at up to five years in prison.
These days, however, circumstances have changed drastically for both veterans. Pogany stood up against the Army and beat the cowardice charge. Since then, he’s become a tireless soldier’s advocate and is currently the director of military outreach and education for Give an Hour, a nonprofit that provides free mental health services to military personnel and their families affected by the current conflicts.
Gray, meanwhile, was one of the first people chosen to participate in the El Paso County Veterans Court, a new legal program designed to help traumatized veterans trapped in the criminal justice system. The court assigned Gray treatment instead of prison time, and lately he’s been spreading the word about veterans courts, which are popping up around the country.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."