The remaining three are still at large from incidents in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Queens, N.Y., and Detroit, Mich. He was arrested for a final time on September 17th, in Fayetteville, this time on a prostitution charge. Yet their names and faces, as well as the oversize trucks they tend to drive, are well-known to plenty of ordinary people who live around Fort Bragg. A Fort Bragg spokesperson identified the soldier as Sgt. The man on the ground, who had been dropped by a single bullet to the right temple, was 44-year-old Timothy Dumas. He was trained for that., The Army officer who did the line-of-duty investigation, a copy of which was first obtained by Jack Murphy of Connecting Vets, noted several discrepancies between the statements Lavigne gave and the evidence collected, including the absence of a screwdriver. I could never take anything serious.. Accidental? Graves was the night she died. You can clearly see the moment a small black hole appears in the sheetrock, blowing out a cone of gypsum powder. David Bragg. We dont know where he has gone. He added, When we woke up he was not here. Half of those deaths have been ruled suicides. Jessica Donati, the author of Eagle Down: The Last Special Forces Fighting the Forever War, tells me that since 2014, the burden of maintaining the United States never-ending war in Afghanistan has shifted almost entirely onto the Green Berets, who have been used by successive administrations as a political tool to plug holes in policies that dont work, and to maintain the fiction that the United States has withdrawn from combat operations. The deaths began in January 2020, when a 19-year-old Texans body was discovered in his bunk in an advanced state of decomposition; the Army has not disclosed the cause, and one year later, the investigation remains ongoing. CIA Director, Noam Chomsky Named in Epstein's Private Calendar: Report Macho as Leshikar might have been, when his little girl told him that he had to wear a dress to attend her tea party, he didnt argue. Multiple people who knew Lavigne tell me that he regularly snorted cocaine, took MDMA, popped pills, and drank heavily. Estella called the Fayetteville police, who filed an incident report. Joshua Diamond, 35, of Plymouth, Mass. The discovery of Lavignes and Dumas bodies also raised hard questions for local law enforcement in Fayetteville, which may be home to Fort Bragg, the largest Army base in the U.S., but remains a relatively small Southern town, whose red-brick historical center, built around a white clock tower, quickly gives way to the strip-mall sprawl of discount supermarkets, hamburger drive-throughs, gun stores, and Baptist churches. To date, the House Armed Services Committee seems not to have noticed the similar pattern at Fort Bragg. In the few photos of Delta Force that exist in the public domain, their faces are blurred or blacked out, their identities classified. Nobody would listen., My son was the most honest, loyal, patriotic person, she continues. He was a sweet, animal-loving kid who went to Afghanistan at the age of 19 and came back a different person, she says. Just because it was dismissed doesnt mean it didnt happen, says Ballard, who believes that military personnel are given special treatment within the criminal-justice system in the counties around Fort Bragg. Related In 2016, he was assigned to the 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, where he served as a horizontal construction engineer and later as a squad leader. Nice, normal people. Others, she says, are narcissistic, or have some other character defect that produces a sense of entitlement, like they can get away with anything. And he fell down on the ground and Uncle Billy kept shooting him. Sgt. He was participating in an airborne training operation at Fort Stewart, Georgia. As the madness of 2020 settled over the country, bringing with it a nationwide wave of drug abuse and violent crime, Lavigne was also spinning out of control. He was promoted to master sergeant in July 2019, becoming an operations team sergeant for a Special Forces Operational Detachment-Alpha, officials said. He was a three-time volunteer who enlisted in the Army in May 2019 and reported to his first duty assignment at Fort Bragg in October. Jean Cruz De Leon,20, of Marrero, Louisiana, was killed in a Sept. 9 training accident when his parachute malfunctioned, according to a statement released by the 82nd Airborne Division. But he would be dead before his scheduled court appearance. Succession Recap: Logan Roy Makes Shock Return, Shiv and Tom Get Kinky Finally, one womans face lights up. Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3528. Investigators identified the soldiers as Spc. Explore Life Stories, Offer Condolences & Send Flowers. The Fort Bragg Murders At least 44 Fort Bragg soldiers died stateside in 2020 several of them were homicides. The militarys overdose crisis, though most severe at Fort Bragg, affects the entire Army and every other service branch, too. He was promoted to master sergeant in July, becoming an operations team sergeant for a Special Forces Operational Detachment-Alpha, officials said. Half of those deaths have been ruled suicides. I dont get intimidated by people easily, she says. Both had been killed by gunshots, and according to news reports, shell casings were scattered on the ground. He told the county investigator that Leshikar had come at him with a screwdriver, leaving him no choice but to shoot in self-defense, supposedly for the protection of the children. On a cold evening in late January, when I visit the approximate spot where he was found, the woods are perfectly still and quiet, with not even a bird chirping. What protocol is in place to identify and respond to an uptick in overdoses either generally or at a specific military installation? His rudeness annoyed her. William J. LaVigne II, 37, was found dead near a Fort Bragg training area close to the body of Army veteran Timothy J. Dumas, 44, Dec. 2. They are ghosts. When they found my brothers remains, he didnt have eyes. Both men had young daughters. The vacation lasted nearly a week. Joseph Zygarowski who died during a training exercise at Fort Bragg on April 19. In his LinkedIn photo, Dumas looks fairly nondescript. Ari McGuire, died of a fentanyl overdose at Fort Bragg in August 2019, after he was allegedly introduced to drugs by his platoon sergeant in Afghanistan. Joseph Zygarowski, 25. What is the protocol for informing family in the event of an overdose, including non-fatal overdoses. Such a pigheaded, egotistical man was the first impression he made on his wife, Laura, a 39-year-old paralegal from Hawaii whose dad was a Marine. On May 9, 2018, roughly three months after Becky Kunzes death, Sarah Hartsfield fatally shot her onetime fianc in the large home they had moved to from Texas months before. She and her whole family had gone into the back bedroom to hide. The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time Tier 1 operators have ascended so high in the lethal bureaucracy that they no longer exist. FORT BRAGG A soldier is being mourned after he was killed during a training exercise at Fort Bragg, officials said Friday. Its not just combat trauma and moral injury, says Naylor. He would leave his phone and wallet for sure, but not his glasses. The next day, he was indicted on two felony charges: harboring an escapee and maintaining a vehicle or dwelling place to manufacture a controlled substance. But he scared me.. CID rejects any notion that anything but a complete and unbiased investigation was conducted, Grey says. On March 28th, the Fayetteville police responded to an incident in which he was suspected of shooting into an occupied dwelling. Leshikars killing was ruled a justifiable homicide, but Swain declines to say on what grounds investigators came to that conclusion. In 2015, former SEAL James Matthews got pulled over in New Jersey towing a trailer loaded with $1.4 million worth of marijuana. Boger was a student of the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. The cause of death was homicide. No one I spoke to had any clue, or even a theory, who the surviving shooter or shooters were. He didnt respond, she says. Even though its a closed case, Laura says, they told us the investigation doesnt see the public eye.. It was much easier, ironically, to get information on Fort Bragg-based personnel who died in foreign countries. This May will be that investigations one-year mark, and no suspects have been identified. The justification was unconvincing on its face. Matthew Disney, 20, of Aberdeen, Maryland. Sgt. Have a nice day. , I go to the location listed on the incident report to learn more, and find four people, two men and two women, living in a one-bedroom apartment in a drab complex near Cross Creek. FORT BRAGG, N.C. (WTVD) -- A soldier at Fort Bragg died April 19 during a training exercise. Her husband and Lavigne remained with the other car, bound for Fayetteville, with the girls in the backseat. The problems persisted. - Page 2. Most immediately, though, the discovery of Lavignes body represented a problem for the leadership at Fort Bragg. You got 42 confirmed kills? she says, imitating a mans deep voice. Army Investigates Deaths of Green Beret and Veteran at Fort Bragg Officials have not said how the men died. Special operation forces induct members into regiments at Fort Bragg. It far surpassed Fort Hood, where 28 soldier deaths in 2020 led to a congressional investigation, a sweeping indictment of the installations toxic culture, and the dismissal of most of the chain of command. After completing basic combat training and advanced individual training in 2019 at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, he was assigned to the 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, where he served as a combat engineer. Their brains bounced against their skulls a dozen times on that tour, in addition to calling in airstrikes, or being in an armored vehicle that gets rocked by an IED. Terry Wayne Smoot. How they knew each other, the nature of their connection, remains a mystery. When they found my brothers remains, he didnt even have eyes. Lavigne was transported downtown, but did not remain long in the police station. Out of nowhere, she says, this tall, baldheaded black dude comes up with a skinny black guy with dreads. Lewis followed her outside, holding their three-year-old daughter on one hip and a gun in the other hand. But he scared me., a copy of which was first obtained by Jack Murphy of. That last part wasnt true, it later emerged. The Fayetteville Observer. ArMA is the primary source for non-emergency issues (Priority-2 & Priority-3) demand maintenance order (DMO) submissions. I kill people for a living., After his dozen-plus deployments, Lavigne was no less haunted by moral injury. Joseph Zygarowski who died during a training exercise at Fort Bragg on April 19. She also claims to have given Lavigne a tattoo on his chest, and her description matches what CID agents described to Mabey: The tattoo includes the initials M.L., for Mark Leshikar, the date he died, and an inscription, Till Valhalla.. Over time though, he grew on me.. Maybe drugs could have been a reason why this happened, he speculates, without elaborating. In just 18 months, Fort Bragg lost over 80 soldiers from sudden and unexplained causes. On several occasions, various people at Fort Bragg have offered to sell him tabs, Romero says, including the soldier from the camping trip. He attended Special Forces Assessment and Selection and graduated as a Special Forces engineer sergeant in October 2007, beingassigned to the 19th Special Forces Groups 2nd Battalion. William J. Lavigne II, 37, and Timothy Dumas, 44. Tammy Mabey, Leshikars mom, had spent 18 years in law enforcement, working as a dispatcher, a jailer, and a patrolwoman in California, Idaho, and Nevada. Aside from suicide, overdose and complications from drug abuse including steroids was the leading cause of death. Steve Kirsch has reported on recent deaths at Fr. The 9mm round, fired from a Taurus Millennium G2, missed the boy by about 18 inches. A 24-year-old military mechanic died Wednesday at Fort Bragg during a traffic accident at Fort Bragg, officials announced Friday. Pfc. Two days after Dumas and Lavigne were found dead, more details emerged on an earlier Fort Bragg killing: the death of Specialist Enrique Roman-Martinez, who had gone missing over Memorial Day weekend on a camping trip to the North Carolina shore with six of his fellow paratroopers. The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time No way., Romero knows one of the other paratroopers who was on the camping trip. Though the offense was a felony, he was not charged. To cap off a freakish year at Fort Bragg, just three weeks after Lavigne and Dumas turned up dead, a 31-year-old combat medic assigned to Special Forces named Keith Lewis shot and killed his pregnant wife, Sarah Lewis, an Air Force veteran who was due to give birth at any moment. Yet there were no firearms to be found at the scene, and no trace of the third man, the surviving shooter. hree weeks before Christmas, in the piney woods outside of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, a deer hunter came across the fallout from a firefight that, to date, no one has been able to explain. Her son, Spc. Cruz De Leon was an infantryman assigned to the divisions Company A, 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team. In response to these and other embarrassments, including President Trumps pardon of former SEAL Eddie Freaking Evil Gallagher, the commander of all special-operations forces, Gen. Richard Clarke, ordered a comprehensive ethics review in August 2019. Words his sister uses to describe him include gentle, spiritual, and feminist. He was a hippie, a believer in crystals, she says. He was seeing bad things.. He saw people die. Lavigne, too, managed to escape prosecution on multiple occasions, though he had been suspected of felonies that included harboring an escapee, maintaining a vehicle or dwelling to manufacture a controlled substance, and even murder. I killed my best friend, he said, according to Patino. We asked and begged them so many times, Griselda says, and they just refuse to tell us who these people are. But Grey says that the Privacy Act forbids them from releasing the names. A memorial service today at Fort Bragg makes 25 years since the 82nd Airborne Division suffered its biggest one-day loss of life since World War II. July 17, 2021 (83 years old) View obituary. I dont know any soldier who has done the tours he had done that doesnt., That was certainly the case with Lavigne. No screwdriver was found anywhere near Leshikars body. Its just like taking an antidepressant, he would say. 2023 Rolling Stone, LLC. Well, I got 120.. View obituary. Find an obituary, get service details, leave condolence messages or send flowers or gifts in memory of a loved one. The Armys Criminal Investigative Command, or CID, also concluded that the homicide was justified, likewise for reasons that it refuses to make public. He was repeatedly arrested for possession of untaxed liquor, failure to return rented property, and permitting a minor to consume alcohol. Roman-Martinez joined the Army in September 2016. And there have been several murders in the last few years around Fort Bragg with apparent links to drug-trafficking by elite soldiers, or distribution networks run by ordinary enlisted men in the 82nd. The young soldier who called 911 also told the dispatcher, unprompted, that Roman-Martinez had suicidal tendencies, which his sister strenuously disputes. People not inclined to be team players, he explained, somewhat paradoxically. MILITARY. During the eight-hour drive back to North Carolina, Laura split off to take her sister to the airport in Raleigh. Terrance Salazar, 24, of Pleasanton, Texas, was found unresponsive in his room Nov. 11 and could not be revived, a spokesman for the 82nd Airborne Division said. He joined the Army in April of 2018 and arrived at Fort Bragg in October of 2018. Fort Bragg is the largest military base in the U.S. and the command post for the Armys most elite units, such as Delta Force and the Green Berets, which have borne a disproportionate burden of Americas never-ending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, undergoing not just combat trauma and moral injury but a lot of traumatic brain injuries as well. Thirteen U.S. service members were killed in the attack and 45 were wounded. According to Stars & Stripes, more than 30 soldiers working at Fort Bragg have died so far in 2020. Governor Roy Cooper ordered all U.S. and North Carolina flags at state facilities to half-staff beginning immediately until sunset Wednesday, April 26, in honor of U.S. Army Sgt. His dream was to go to pharmacy school. A Fort Bragg spokesperson identified the soldier as Sgt. Fayetteville Police did not respond to multiple requests for more information. Then 9/11 happened, touching off the longest period of war in U.S. history. In the past six weeks, four wives of soldiers at Fort Bragg have been murdered. He was deployed to Saudi Arabia when he read on Facebook that Roman-Martinez, whom hed known since middle school, had gone missing. We want to hear it. They are a very hush-hush community, says Diane Ballard, a police detective in the tiny town of Vass, where numerous Delta Force operators, current and retired, own houses. She shows me the brief clip on her phone. Leshikar opened the hood of the car, a Honda Accord, and with the engine still hot, began to disassemble it. Did he struggle with drugs, alcohol, cocaine, tramadol? She believed them to be his fellow Delta Force operators because they had been introduced to her that way, because she had seen the same men drop him off in a vehicle after a training mission, and because they talked and joked about ops they had been on and constantly tried to one-up one another. McLaughlin joined the Army in 2012, according to the 82nd Airborne Division public affairs office. All rights reserved. Fish ate them, Griselda says, and begins to cry. A Dallas County jury awarded more than $860 million to the parents of a woman killed in 2019 when a 200-foot steel crane toppled onto her apartment building from an adjacent construction site. He stands in front of a parking lot at night, a middle-aged, broad-chested black man with a shaved head, dressed in whiskered jeans and a shirt with vertical stripes. 0:04. According to Dumas wife, the nightclub doesnt exist anymore. There were a couple others that were with us, she tells me, drinking and partying. According to the medical examiner, Roman-Martinez had been decapitated. He had migraines, nightmares, personality changes., She still has his body in cold storage, in a freezer in Alaska, because the Army wont turn over his autopsy report or medical file, and she doesnt want to lose evidence that his brain was damaged from TBI or that he was medicated for PTSD. After this story went to press, a U.S. Army Special Operations Command spokesperson gave this statement to Rolling Stone regarding how the command handled Billy Lavignes legal trouble: Due to his length of service, Master Sgt. Lavigne was entitled to a variety of due process protections. Joseph Zygarowski who died during a training exercise at Fort Bragg on April 19. Over the course of several months of correspondence, the public-affairs office eventually disclosed the number of homicides and suicides, but not deaths from accidents and illnesses, which would include drug overdoses. The only known common denominator between them was Fort Bragg. Spc. Taking part in and witnessing violence, being away from home for long periods of time, and disillusionment with the mission can put special operators at heightened risk, Donati says, of divorce, alcoholism, substance abuse, and anger issues. Dec. 7, 2020. What is known is that on December 22nd, Sarah dialed 911 and fled to a neighbors house. Maybe. FORT BRAGG, N.C. (WTVD) -- A soldier at Fort Bragg died April 19 during a training exercise. He fell in love with what he was doing and decided he was going to make a career out of it, says his dad, who still lives in the remote Upper Peninsula of Michigan where Billy grew up skateboarding and riding motocross. Based out of a high-security compound inside Fort Bragg, it has become a covert military within the military. The last person to have seen him alive that I could identify is a woman named Jessie Marie Patino, a tattoo artist and junkyard mechanic. McLaughlin and Villalon were soldiers who were part of the B Company, 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division. He was in an IED blast. Search Fort Bragg obituaries and condolences, hosted by Echovita.com. He finally put the gun down. In the aftermath, Lynda says, There were no real repercussions.. Governor Roy Cooper ordered all U.S. and North Carolina flags at state facilities to half-staff beginning immediately until sunset Wednesday, April 26, in honor of U.S. Army Sgt. Thank you for your service. He changed dramatically in a short period of time, says his father, who came from Michigan to stay with him after the shooting. Army authorities wont disclose the total number of soldiers stationed there who died in 2020, but Lavigne was one of a spate of homicides and suicides that brought the tally up to at least 44, pushing Fort Bragg to a decisive first-place finish in a race no one wanted to win. He was the rock in my life. He doesnt believe the story told by the other six campers that Roman-Martinez simply wandered off at night, leaving his phone, wallet, and glasses behind in the tent. Jean Cruz De Leon , 20, of Marrero, Louisiana, was killed in a Sept. 9 training accident when his parachute Sgt. He served as an Army sergeant for almost seven years and was deployed three times with one combat tour in Iraq. The 172,000-acre Fort Bragg base is one of the world's largest military complexes with approximately 57,000 military personnel, 11,000 civilian employees and 23,000 family members. Roman-Martinezs partial remains were later found May 29, after washing up on Shackleford Banks Island, which is part of the Cape Lookout National Seashore. I hurt Sarah, and my career is ruined. I talked to him for a long time. With multiple police pistols pointed at him and officers shouting at him to drop the gun, Lewis raised his weapon and shot himself in the forehead. The identity of a soldier struck and killed by a vehicle on Fort Bragg last week was released Monday. Lois Ruth Collins. Enrique Roman-Martinez, 21, of Chino, California, was last seen May 22 while camping with fellow soldiers near Mile Marker 46 on South Core Banks. Fort Bragg is the largest military base in the U.S. and the command post for the Armys most elite units, such as Delta Force and the Green Berets, which have borne a disproportionate burden of Americas never-ending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, undergoing not just combat trauma and moral injury but a lot of traumatic brain injuries as well. He kind of represented himself as an SF operator, she says, though he was just a logistics guy. I would see him staring off in space a lot, thinking. On the Fourth of July, he took his son to see the fireworks at Fort Bragg. More: Fort Bragg paratrooper dies following accident in Syria. Everybody seemed to know the same people. His whole world was his children and his wife.. On April 11th, shortly before the number of Covid-19 cases in the U.S. surpassed 1 million, Dumas had been arrested in Winston-Salem. And when my daddy looked up, I could see he wasnt there anymore.. Mount is survived by his wife and parents. He repaired construction equipment and was assigned to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, a Fort Bragg news release said. Caleb Smither, 19, of Lubbock, Texas, died Jan. 28, 2020, in his barracks room on Fort Bragg. He had a strong personality. Posted 2023-04-21T13:30:09+00:00 - Updated 2023-04-21T23:20:10+00:00 On February 2nd, the Charlotte field office put out a bulletin seeking assistance from the public to establish a timeline of the two mens movements up until their deaths. Dumas had been arrested numerous times in North Carolina on charges ranging from making terroristic threats to impersonating a cop, yet had never been prosecuted. The sheriffs office refused to share a full investigative report on the incident with the Leshikar family, which, Swain says, is department policy. August 12, 2022 (52 years old) View obituary. Rachael Riley. Some of them are really great. Nathan Goodman, 36, of Hope Mills, died Jan. 14, 2020, in a free-fall training exercise near Eloy, Arizona. 0:04. Most recent obituaries in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The DAs office did not respond to multiple requests for more information. These incidents, the letter read, indicate a problem that may be underreported, and are a call for urgent action. The authorities have kept completely mum. Here's who they are. Estella thought he was joking. He had been shot multiple times in the chest, wrapped in a type of nylon blanket that soldiers call a woobie, and placed in the back of his own truck, the gray Chevrolet. The last time his father spoke to him was Thanksgiving. Cloaked in secrecy and sloshing with money, JSOC has operational control over the most elite commando units of each of the major service branches, including the Navys SEAL Team 6 and the Armys Delta Force, which it uses to carry out the nations most politically risky, no-fail missions, like the killing of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the emir of the Islamic State, in 2019. He went out and bought a dress in his size, says Laura. The report, released in early 2020, was mostly a whitewash, full of vague language about improving leadership and accountability. It was out of control, says his best friends wife, Laura Leshikar.
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