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RACHEAL BOWMAN, a single mother from Aberdeen, Maryland, completing her shift as a postal worker on the afternoon of June 11, 2021, when she received a disturbing call from her son’s girlfriend. His son, Matthew Disney, a 20-year-old soldier stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, doesn’t answer his phone. Neither his girlfriend, nor his mother, nor his little sisters can succeed with him. “He’s very different from him,” Bowman says. Matthew’s sister has been incredibly ill all her life” with a rare intestinal disorder. “When she calls, he answers. “
Bowman told Rolling Stone that his son was the child he never had to worry about. , football and video games. And for as long as she can remember, he had the brain to sign up for the military. said. ” Whether you like it or not your president. He can tell you everything about other countries where it was mandatory. “
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Disney took into account all branches of service and opted for the U. S. military. UU. Se enlisted after high school, trained as a radar operator, and in March 2020, was assigned to an airborne artillery regiment at Fort Bragg. He had done nine parachute jumps and the last time he talked to his mother, he was excited to do his tenth. But that Friday in June, I had a day off. “Hours passed and he didn’t respond to any of us,” Bowman says. character. “
Bowman and his daughters called some of Disney’s friends, infantry mates at Fort Bragg, and alerted the firefighter on duty, he said, who found surveillance footage from Disney and another radarman, SPC. Joshua Diamond entered the barracks at 11 p. m. the day before. . But when they knocked on Diamond’s closed door, no one answered. Neither the firefighters nor the army police forcibly opened Diamond’s door because it hadn’t been 24 hours, which means he and Disney can’t be thought of as missing persons. “Even if there was a circle of family members who said something bad,” Bowman says, “they didn’t open the closed door. “
Bowman was frantic. He contacted a circle of family friends in Maryland, an army colonel, and he made calls that prompted the army police to act. They called Bowman and asked for permission to track his son’s phone. “And then it was the crickets,” she says. Everything is silent. The moment I gave my permission to ping his phone, the members didn’t talk to us again.
The army follows a strict procedure to notify the relatives of the sick and at all times sends a uniformed man to announce the bad news in person. But around midnight, Disney’s sister won an anonymous call. Bowman was on the porch. Shout,” he said. And I walked in, and she was on the kitchen floor with Matt’s girlfriend, yelling, “It’s not funny. What kind of bad joke is this?»
The caller only told them that Disney is “no longer alive. “Bowman made a phone call after a desperate phone call and, at two in the morning, controlled to succeed his son’s battalion commander. It showed that Disney discovered in Diamond’s room, lifeless. “I’m so sorry,” he remembers telling him. He’s a smart guy. “But I didn’t need to tell him what had happened, only that Disney “did nothing to harm himself. “
In addition to the surprise and pain of learning that his only son had died, Bowman was confused. If it wasn’t suicide, then what had happened to Matthew?All she can think of is that the other soldier, Diamond, must have done something to harm her.
That was not the case. In fact, Diamond was also dead. His body was discovered slumped on the Disney floor, almost like in a hug. car or somewhere outside the station, with no seemingly obvious cause. According to a set of casualty reports received through Rolling Stone through the Freedom of Information Act, at least 14, and as many as 30, Fort Bragg infantrymen have died in this way since the start of 2020. However, there has been no popularity of the military or reports in the national press about any facet of this phenomenon, nor a word from a member of Congress. Only the families of those affected were informed, discreetly and privately.
Disney’s memorial service was held in July. “We were preparing to enter the chapel,” Bowman says, and Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, entered the room and personally informed him that the effects of a toxicology report had arrived. The cause of death was acute fentanyl poisoning.
Donahue, who has since been promoted to lieutenant general, did not respond to a request for comment sent to Fort Bragg. But Rolling Stone received Form 1300 from Disney’s Department of Defense, an “accident report,” which necessarily purports to be a military death. certificate. She confirms that she died of a fentanyl overdose.
This only bothered Bowman’s confusion. ” My son is not a drug addict,” she insists. In no case would he have consciously ingested fentanyl. removes opioids, so he is well aware of the dangers they entail. “Fentanyl, ketamine, Narcan, laudanum, Percocet, morphine,” Bowman says.
However, a verbal exchange he never had with his children about counterfeit pills. Military investigators informed him that Disney had ingested an imitation of Percocet, a prescription painkiller. , she says, “until my son took one and killed it. “
AN INCREDIBLE TOTAL of 109 active and reserve infantrymen assigned to Fort Bragg lost their lives in 2020 and 2021, according to victim reports received through the Freedom of Information Act. Only 4 of the deaths occurred in combat operations abroad. Fewer than 20 were from herbal causes. Everything else was avoidable. This is likely an unprecedented wave of deaths at a modern U. S. military facility. USA
Forty-one Fort Bragg infantrymen committed suicide in 2020 and 2021, making suicide the leading cause of death. An Army spokesman, Matthew Leonard, showed that no other base has ever recorded a higher number of suicides in two years. There have also been a shocking number of incidents of violence between infantrymen. Since mid-2020, 11 Fort Bragg infantrymen have been killed or charged with murder, in addition to one murder-suicide. Five Infantrymen from Fort Bragg were shot and one was beheaded. Rolling Stone has reported in the past on the eruption of violent crime at Fort Bragg and investigated several of the unsolved murders. The newly received documents shed light on another type of killers stalking infantrymen and, in large part, the record number of deaths.
Fourteen of the victim reports explicitly state that the soldier died from a drug overdose. Eleven of them identify fentanyl as the lethal agent. In five other cases, the soldier died at a young age from acute kidney or liver failure, or a central attack, medical events that other young people do not experience, but which may be caused by heavy drug use, drug-like headaches, or organ damage due to the use of prohibited steroids. In addition, there have been two cases in which infantrymen died for “undetermined” reasons after being found insensitive, for a total of 21 probable deaths from similar drugs in the two years ending in December. 2021. By comparison, there were about thirteen deaths from illness at Fort Bragg. During the same period, 14 injuries to cars and motorcycles and 3 fatal injuries in training. Apart from cases of self-harm, accidental overdose is the leading cause of death at Fort Bragg.
Rolling Stone received casualty reports from the U. S. Army Human Resources Command. Not Fort Bragg, where officials did not communicate at all. A spokesman for the base, a colonel, said the death toll in 2020 was 45. Reports put him at 56. Another spokesman, a captain, said in writing that the death toll in 2021 was 38. In fact, 53. The same captain also said Rolling Stone that the number of opioid overdoses last year four. Actually, at least six, and probably 11, if you count all the deaths that were most likely drug-related. When confronted with those facts, Fort Bragg officials deflect blame and point to trends in the general population. “We don’t see this as a remote factor that only affects Fort Bragg,” Capt. Matt Visser wrote in an email. He pointed to the proximity of Interstate 95, the Miami-New York highway, an infamous drug trafficking hall, which “increases access to substances” for infantrymen at Fort Bragg.
In peak cases, there is no announcement when a soldier overdoses. For example, on February 23, 2020, SSC. Christopher Jenkins, a 22-year-old intelligence analyst, died of “fentanyl and dextromethorphan poisoning,” according to his accident report. Although this happened at Fort Bragg, there is no press release or data on the death of this active duty soldier. , originally from West Palm Beach, Florida. No any obituary was published and Jenkins left no clues on the Internet.
Other Fort Bragg infantrymen who died of an overdose without the public noticing in 2020 and 2021 come with the SCC. Christhiam Gonzalez-Pineda, a Helicopter Repairman from Honduras who died from the acute effects of unspecified “illegal substances,” according to his crash report; Infantryman Anthony Savala, a Californian infantryman who died from a cocktail of Benadryl, benzodiazepines and fentanyl; Cps. Zachary Bracken, a Maryland Green Berets candidate who died of a mixture of alcohol and fentanyl; Sergeant First Class Michael Tardie, an Arizona infantryman who died of the same mixture; Sgt. David Mazzullo, a New York signals intelligence analyst who died of an overdose of heroin and fentanyl; and Spc. Matthew Meadows, a Texas parachute installer who died from fentanyl alone. None of those deaths have been made public.
In other cases, for reasons that are unclear, Fort Bragg made an announcement when a soldier died of an overdose, but in a confusing and euphemistic way that did not mention the drug. For example, an Ohio Special Forces candidate named Jamie Boger discovered “sleepy in his barracks,” according to a March 16, 2020, press release; his turn of fate report shows that he died from cocaine and fentanyl intoxication. Similarly, on November 11, 2020, SSC. Terrance Salazar, a Texas infantryman, discovered “subconscious in his room”; he died from an aggregate of alcohol and cough syrup. Mikel Rubino, a California infantryman, “discovered subconscious in his barracks” on August 13, 2021; died of a fentanyl overdose, according to his fate spin report. Six weeks later, a Texas artillery observer discovered “insensitive” in his off-duty home; his cause of death remains awaiting determination.
The artillery observer died in the first week of October 2021, the month in which Fort Bragg infantrymen lost their lives at an incredible rate of one every three days. The local newspaper, The Fayetteville Observer, noted the tendency of infantrymen to die. of inexplicable reasons and published an article on October 30 that related the cases of “six infantrymen discovered dead in service barracks. “After that, the public affairs office stopped reporting overdose deaths. being “insensitive” have ceased.
“The army says, ‘Hey, pass ribbons to the trees,'” Disney’s mother explains. “They want to start talking about the problem. But they don’t want to acknowledge it.
However, another 21 Fort Bragg infantrymen died over the next five months, one from an apparent overdose and another nine from cases pending determination. Major Eric Ewoldsen, on March 25, 2022. Ewoldsen was not just any soldier. According to various resources, he was an officer of delta force, a top-secret human fighter unit regarded as the ultimate selective organization in the entire Department of Defense. It’s a mystery how Ewoldsen, a 38-year-old fitness fan, discovered himself collapsed in a vehicle parked somewhere in Fort Bragg, but resources close to his circle of relatives say there were no criminal acts involved. an email.
“All those deaths in the same way, and nobody talks about them,” says Racheal Bowman, Disney’s mother. “It’s all very secret. Everything is swept under the rug. “She adds: “This is an obvious problem.
MANY PEOPLE ASSUME that because infantrymen are subject to drug testing, they cannot use illicit substances. This assumption is incorrect. The military has long followed a more reckless attitude toward drug use than some might expect. Many years ago, when I enlisted, my recruiter didn’t ask me if I smoked marijuana, but rather, “When was the last time?He then showed me a mini-fridge at his workplace filled with detox drinks that he thought I would be allowed to have a urinalysis. Later, as my unit was about to deploy to Iraq, a sergeant in my platoon tested positive for cocaine. Nothing happened to him.
To an even greater degree than Americans in general, American infantrymen are overworked, stressed, and chronically sleep deprived. To cope with the demands of their physical and emotional work, which is not easy, they turn to a total diversity of powerful substances, legal and illegal, whether it is a hypercaffeinated energy drink to stimulate a pre-dawn workout, a rest joint to relieve a chronic injury, steroids to gain merit in variety for an elite unit or a line of cocaine in the bathroom of a bar after an El Use of hard drugs is provided in the special forces. A Navy SEAL whistleblower organization told CBS News that the military’s drug testing protocols were “a joke. “ownership or use. It is a crime that is more productive to deal with discreetly and administratively. But fentanyl replaced mathematics.
Fentanyl overdose is now the leading cause of death among American adults under the age of 45. This super-powerful, perniciously addictive, low-cost, nightmarish drug has infected the entire diversity of illicit narcotics in the United States. People who believe they are taking cocaine, Xanax, hydrocodone, or some other relatively milder substance would possibly end up unknowingly drinking it. In fact, many of those deaths deserve not to be considered overdoses, but accidental poisonings.
“I probably had no idea about fentanyl, that’s for sure,” says a close friend of SPC. Joshua Diamond, the radar operator in whose room Disney found dead. “According to the text messages they found on his phone, he bought a Percocet. . “
Or he thought. It’s unclear if Diamond and Disney shared a tablet or if they took one each. Their families learned from investigators that Diamond had purchased the tablet(s) from a fellow soldier on the 82nd Airborne, who had gotten rid of them from the dark web.
Diamond grew up in Taunton, Massachusetts, a small town south of Boston. According to the friend (who wanted to remain anonymous because he works in law enforcement), Diamond did “grueling work” when he was in his twenties, “working on the street” and joined the military at the age of 34 in search of a “structure in his life. “He looked for “something I can be proud of,” the friend says, “a solid career. “
The Massachusetts domain, where he and Diamond grew up in combination, is “plagued by overdose deaths,” he says, but the friend remains confused about Diamond beyond drug use. “I don’t need to sit here and say that he is a saint and an altar. Boy,” he said. All he was worried about was not a lifestyle. “
The last time he saw Diamond, in May 2021, he had recently moved from Iraq. “His life is going well,” the friend said. He contemplates asking his friend to marry him. He’s doing very well. That’s why it’s so devastating. I think he’s going to be informed of an industry and be proud of himself. Instead, he put it in a pine box.
The director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Dr. Nora Volkow told Rolling Stone that the number of opioid overdose deaths in the United States has increased over the past two decades. At first, the challenge was prescription pills, then heroin. She compares the emergence of fentanyl around 2015 or 2016 to the Omicron variant of Covid-19. “It’s installed everywhere,” he says.
Fentanyl is a classic example of the reliable and well-known trend of economists to ban drugs and alcohol to produce new ingredients that are increasingly potent, compact, reasonable to manufacture and poisonous to users. Unlike heroin, fentanyl can be synthesized in the lab without wanting to grow poppy plants. It has such a high concentration that it can be successfully distributed by mail.
On average, he says, the army corps is less likely to die from an opioid overdose than the general population, largely because of basic screening that excludes other people with pre-existing substance use disorders. However, recent studies show a “rapid and dramatic” increase in the absolute number of overdose deaths among the corps of active-duty army workers, he says. “They have increased, as in all of the United States. ” He adds that the Army’s medical formula has been “very proactive” in its response, “especially in the distribution of Naloxone. “
In addition to the Fort Bragg casualty reports, Rolling Stone received the casualty reports for every single American soldier, across the entire military, who died in 2021. Documents show that of the 505 total deaths, 33 were from confirmed overdose. This alone would make overdose a leading cause of death among US infantrymen, suicide, illness, and accidents, but much higher than homicides and combat deaths. However, as at Fort Bragg, there are a significant number of deaths for what the military has described as reasons of “bewilderment. ” If it were an overdose, they would in particular increase the total. These 27 cases “pending decision” come with a soldier who was discovered “unconscious” in his barracks in Vicenza, Italy; 3 infantrymen stationed in Alaska who were discovered dead over the winter, two at home and one in a vehicle; some other Alaska-based soldier who died in California from what the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner decided was a fentanyl overdose; and the death of two Special Forces infantrymen, one in El Salvador and one in Long Island, New York, for reasons the military has not made a decision on.
Regardless of the true total number of soldier overdoses, it is evident that an unbalanced percentage of them occur at Fort Bragg, which differs from most other bases in that it is populated predominantly by male infantrymen in combat weapons units. It is a complete base of triggers, where many have made deployments in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. More recently, it was the 82nd that evacuated Kabul’s airport when the United States withdrew. drug addiction, “the mental misery of being deployed, watching other people die, and being in a war zone” makes veterans “more vulnerable to drug use and excessive alcohol consumption as they try to heal from intense PTSD-related anxiety. “
According to medical experts, alcohol and drug abuse lies right behind depression and other temperament disorders as predictors of suicidal behavior. Trauma fuels suicides and overdoses, which can be difficult for forensic pathologists to distinguish.
The two’s push at Fort Bragg coincided with the demoralizing end of the war in Afghanistan, in which special forces and the 82nd Airborne Division played such a vital role. Enemy, it certainly contributes to the unease that leads infantrymen to use opioids and other poisonous narcotics. Here are old parallels with the widespread use of heroin by American infantrymen at the end of the Vietnam War. Military leaders will deny this and say morale is low. High, however, there is a palpable sense of futility and disillusionment that hangs over bases like Fort Bragg. “It’s a miserable place,” says a young soldier from the ’82 who was recently having breakfast at the nearby McDonald’s.
“The army didn’t care how he died,” says a grieving mother. “I have a lot of unanswered questions, but it turns out that no one cares. “
Despite the lack of reports on this issue, Fort Bragg knows it has a problem. In a statement to Rolling Stone, a spokesperson said the base had recently taken a series of new steps to curb drug distribution in the mail. They have an increased police presence at the gates, more background checks on visitors, deployed more drug-sniffing dogs and a higher frequency of random urine tests, Capt. Visser wrote. However, drug-related crimes exceeded one hundred percent in fiscal year 2021, an official from the Provost Sheriff’s Office admitted to the local ABC affiliate. According to knowledge received via Rolling Stone, as many as 232 Fort Bragg infantrymen were charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice last year for possession, use, or distribution of a controlled substance, adding one incident in which accused a deputy of having a second job as a drug dealer and promoting oxycodone from his patrol car. And 2021 saw the continuation of a trend Rolling Stone reported on in the past: Green Berets and other elite foot soldiers getting into the drug game.
Last year, I wrote about the case of Billy Lavigne, a Delta Force drug dealer discovered murdered in the woods outside Fort Bragg in December 2020. Two sources who knew Lavigne now say she was working with the North Carolina operation. Drug cartel.
“This guy was running for the poster,” says a tattoo artist who saw Lavigne in November 2020, shortly before he was discovered shooting him in the back of his own truck. “He was carrying methamphetamine. He was driving with other people returning from their pickup location and collecting cash if someone had a challenge and didn’t need to pay. He adds, “I went with him several times to Atlanta, where they were cooking. “According to her, “it must have been the cartel that killed him. “
Lavigne was a drug expert and committed a series of irrational crimes from 2018 to 2020, adding the murder of his most productive friend, another green beret. the poster didn’t appreciate that it attracted so much attention, says the tattoo artist. “It’s anything called the green light,” he explains. That means they’re going to kill you. “
Lavigne’s murder remains unsolved. ” I guess he was involved in the cartels and probably promoting or moving things,” says James Reese, a retired Delta Force lieutenant colonel who personally knew Lavigne and worked with him in Iraq. he gave them cash and couldn’t pay. Then the sand merchant came here to look for Billy.
The enigmatic case of Enrique Roman Martinez, the young soldier at Fort Bragg in Chino, California, who was beheaded on a camping vacation in May 2020 with six of his comrades in ’82, is also unresolved. Rolling Stone recently received the full CID of 1526 pages. Investigation file on the alleged homicide case, which makes it clear that LSD played a key role in what happened. The partially redacted documents, which aggregate the campers’ handwritten statements, paint a picture of a beach vacation that turned into a bad psychedelic vacation and then a horror movie, yet it is never specified who the culprits who cut off Martinez’s head are.
Most recently, in May 2021, an 82nd-rank sergeant named Martin Acevedo III was arrested in a joint raid through the Department of Homeland Security and the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office. Authorities seized more than two kilograms of coca, several firearms and $99,808 in money from his Green Heron Drive to his home and charged him with heavy trafficking charges. Acevedo pleaded guilty and is expected to be sentenced in August 2022.
Four months after Acevedo’s arrest, a special forces personnel sergeant named David Rankine was charged with drug trafficking for uploading “various amounts of anabolic steroids” to the United States. Rankine was also charged with cocaine use, endangering young people for allegedly inhaling and injecting drugs into a minor, and sexual assault for forcing a woman to hit him at gunpoint. He pleaded guilty to the entire rate of dangerousness of the young men and was sentenced to five years in prison.
To better perceive the psychology of infantrymen, especially elite soldiers, who resort to drug trafficking, I wrote to Sergeant Major Daniel Gould, a green beret who won a silver star for his bravery in Afghanistan, only convicted in 2019 for conspiracy to import a plane. giant amount of cocaine to the United States from Colombia. “I had a wonderful salary and I didn’t want to do what I did,” Gould responded in a letter from federal prison, where he is serving a nine-year sentence. Money What motivated him, he explained, however, he did it most commonly to meet the challenge, out of boredom and because he had lost touch with intelligence and evil because of the gray ethical domain that special forces infantrymen inhabit so often: “The opportunity there, and I took a risk.
Gould’s plan could have succeeded without a captain named Stephen Murga. Murga, an infantry officer assigned to the DEA station in Bogotá, became suspicious when Gould asked him to load a pair of boxing bags into a Florida-bound C-130 and not stop it. the U. S. embassy on the way to the airfield. ” I knew everything that was going on,” Murga told Rolling Stone. “Knowing Dan, I wouldn’t put anything above him. “Murga notified the DEA and Gould forced him to surrender.
Gould, an “adrenaline junkie” and a “war hero who pierced his ego,” according to Murga’s estimate. the ambush line and killed, like, 14 of them.
The flattery and praise Gould won as a result made him feel untouchable, Murga says. He adds that it is a “reverence of character” that is not unusual for many elite soldiers, in his experience. “I have worked with many SF operators in the afterlife. five years,” he says. I don’t think it was motivated by money, but by danger and emotion. He has the idea that he can get away with it. “
Although the president is the commander-in-chief, Congress has ample strength to fund, organize, administer, and the military and, if necessary, reform it. This was evident in 2020, when the House Armed Services Committee created an independent review. committee to evaluate leadership errors that resulted in the deaths of 28 infantrymen at Fort Hood, Texas, in the area of a year of singleness. At the end of this damning investigation, the Pentagon fired nearly the entire chain of command at Fort Hood.
Twice as many infantrymen have died at Fort Bragg for two consecutive years, and overall there have been more incidents of homicide, suicide and drug overdoses. Sexual assault is also a major challenge at Fort Bragg, as Rolling Stone reported in the past. However, Congress has surely done nothing about it.
Fort Bragg is left in the hands of the police themselves, but there are serious doubts about the adequacy of the army’s justice formula to deal with drug and drug crimes formulated. When a soldier dies from overdose or accidental drug intoxication, it is not transparent who deserves to be held accountable or to what extent.
Disney friends told their mother about the soldier’s call suspected of promoting the fatal fake Percocet to Diamond. The soldier was recently convicted of seven counts of drug distribution, reduced to the rank of soldier, dishonorably ignored and sentenced to one year in prison. Bowman says he can’t understand why he wasn’t charged with a crime like manslaughter. because of the threat you just received?”
It is understandable that Bowman needs to see a harsher punishment. “There is no responsibility,” she says. That’s why those young people are dying. “
But it is not entirely transparent that greater recuperative justice would do anything to alleviate the drug crisis at Fort Bragg, or in the military in general. Even if the military imprisoned the traffickers for life, it would do nothing to bring back Disney and Diamond, or one of the others who succumbed to an overdose recently. Similarly, higher law enforcement would do little to deter other soldiers from distributing drugs on the spot, in all likelihood. Tough measures through police and prosecutors have done nothing to decrease the demand for narcotics and demand will generate supply. The 50-year history of the failure of the war on drugs has yet to learn anything from it.
There is perhaps no greater symbol of our latest loss in this endless war than Fort Bragg itself. From this flagship base, the beating center of the US special operations complex, the military apparatus at the origin of the global war on drugs is deployed to the 4 corners of the world. The Green Berets exercise security forces in countries such as Colombia, El Salvador and Honduras. Delta Force allegedly participated in the operations against the cartel that killed Pablo Escobar and captured El Chapo Guzmán. Still, walk Bragg Boulevard in Fayetteville’s Bonnie Doone neighborhood, and among the garage facilities, cell home dealerships, and tattoo parlors, find roach motels filled with drug addicts, destitute veterans camped out under bridges. and uptight junkies hanging around the barricaded traps. The terrible tide of artificial opioids and amphetamines penetrated the high-security gates of Fort Bragg, seeped into the barracks of the lowliest soldiers and caused at least a dozen overdose deaths in the last year alone. These dead soldiers, who outnumber those killed in combat, are clearer proof of the unequivocal defeat of the United States in its longest foreign military crusade than a white flag raised on the main parade ground. As the old saying goes: the war on drugs is over, the drugs have won.
ON THE MORNING of February 16, 2021, Andrea Bracken and her circle of relatives gathered at Arlington National Cemetery to bury the ashes of their son Zachary. Her death two months earlier had come as a surprise to her and her husband. Cps. Zachary Bracken, a special forces candidate at Fort Bragg, only 24 years old. He had been a school athlete and a top-notch football player in his freshman year of college, but he gave up in hopes of putting on a green beret. “He entered the army with a target,” says Andrea. He wanted to enter the special forces. He wanted to be a combat medic.
Your child’s story is not atypical. In the past he had used drugs, adding marijuana and ecstasy. “He tried things,” says Andrea. Zach was very transparent. But he would never have chosen to take fentanyl, she believes. “My son was already a paramedic,” she says. He knows what drugs are. “
Bracken is one of 3 green beret interns, or infantrymen from the Special War Training Group, who recently died of a drug overdose. , in October 2021, cocaine and alcohol). The incident occurred while Bracken was off duty, at a friend’s wedding. a report received through the FOIA formula. Bracken also contained 0. 012 milligrams of fentanyl per liter of blood, a deadly dose.
That’s not what’s written on your death certificate. “The cause of death may simply not be determined,” his mother said, citing the county medical examiner. “That’s how she said it. ” Andrea also had trouble downloading important Bracken records from the army. “Can I get my child’s records?” she asked them. “They said, ‘Of course. ‘ But they had a problem.
“Although they expressed sympathy,” Andrea continues, “the army didn’t care how he died. I have a lot of unanswered questions, but no one cares. “
This is a bitter feeling that is repeated in the circle of relatives of other overdose victims. “They probably wouldn’t give me any answers,” says Diamond’s most productive friend, who was his closest legal relative. Everything was weird, they kept dragging me.
“The military just says, ‘Here, pass mooring ribbons in the trees,'” Bowman says. “They want to open their mouths and start talking about it. The army has to say, “Yes, it’s a challenge. “We know this is a challenge and we will try to fix it. But they don’t want to acknowledge it.
It was freezing cold that February morning when Bracken’s circle of relatives gathered in Arlington. Above the white and uniform tombstones, the trees were bare. Among those who mourned Zachary’s sister, then 22.
The funeral rite had already begun. But there was one last surprise in store for the family, as the army added salt to the wound. There was a kind of confusion in Zachary’s funeral records. “While we wait with many, many, many people, they come out and tell us that we are going to have to bring our son’s remains home,” she recalls. “They said there was a challenge in the data they were given and something had been lost. We were told we had to take him home.
They returned to Norfolk, Virginia, with Zachary’s ashes in the car. At this point in the story, Andrea begins to cry. “There’s no dignity in that,” she said through tears. This is a dignified way to die. “
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