I hurt Sarah, and my career is ruined. I talked to him for a long time. People not inclined to be team players, he explained, somewhat paradoxically. According to officials, 33 of the fatalities are of undetermined causes. Lavigne was entitled to a variety of due process protections. June 23, 2022 (83 years old) View obituary. Keiths mom, Lynda Lewis, tells me that her son should have been expelled from the Army back in 2016, when he assaulted Sarah and got into an armed standoff with the Fayetteville police. No way., Romero knows one of the other paratroopers who was on the camping trip. Yet there were no firearms to be found at the scene, and no trace of the third man, the surviving shooter. Nevertheless, local officials were satisfied by Lavignes claim of self-defense. An orange sun is setting behind row upon row of monotonous pines. 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. The bases spokesman, Col. Joe Buccino, acknowledged that illegal drug use seems to have been a common factor in all of the homicides that involved Fort Bragg soldiers, but emphasized that all but one of the killings pertained to the special-forces units at Fort Bragg, which he could not speak for. Send us a tip using our anonymous form. Leshikars mother, Tammy Mabey, knew her son had a substance-abuse problem. In light of this disturbing trend, the letter reads, we write seeking a full understanding of the pattern of overdoses., Sen. Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts who has sponsored a number of bills to combat the opioid epidemic, is spearheading the oversight effort. They are ghosts. Grant, Virginia ~ 28 February, 2023. Enrique Roman-Martinez of Fort Braggs 82nd Airborne Division was beheaded during a camping trip with six other soldiers. Image in illustration by Alamy. His use of alcohol was of even greater concern. Drugs were in involved in the deaths of Joshua Diamon and Matthew Disney. Owings, Elizabeth Ann Mendocino, CA . This is a previous edition of the Homicide Tracker. Five senators are calling on the Department of Defense to investigate overdose deaths at Fort Bragg, reports Rolling Stone. They say get a lawyer., I just dont know whats going on with our military right now, says Mabey. You can clearly see the moment a small black hole appears in the sheetrock, blowing out a cone of gypsum powder. A soulless expression would come over him, like he was looking through you, when he got to drinking, Nicole says. Lavigne then grabbed the girls, took them inside of the house, and locked out Leshikar. The onslaught totaled the neighbors car, which Sarah tried to hide behind. Almost every time I saw Billy, he was strung out on something., A day after the bodies were found, an unnamed Army official leaked to CBS that both Lavigne and Dumas, at the time of their deaths, were under investigation for trafficking narcotics on Fort Bragg, and that investigators suspected a double homicide from a drug deal gone wrong.. Inside the Rash of Unexplained Deaths at Fort Hood | Vanity Fair It was out of control, says his best friends wife, Laura Leshikar. FORT BRAGG, N.C. (WNCN) - A U.S. Army Special Operations Command soldier was found unresponsive inside a parked vehicle on Friday in Fayetteville, Fort Bragg officials announced Saturday. Its known from postmortem toxicology that Leshikar was taking Valium, tramadol, MDMA, and cocaine. Most recent obituaries in Fort Bragg, California. Just a while ago the FBI went and dived in the area, and didnt find anything. A total of 21 deaths in the two years ending December 2021 can likely to attributed to drug overdoses, according to Rolling Stone. Click here to see the current year. Nine US soldiers, all stationed at Fort Bragg, all in their 20s or 30s, recently died at from "undetermined" causes, or after being discovered "unresponsive" in their bunks. A pixelated face is the apogee of the operator aesthetic, which begins with long hair, a bushy beard, and a checkered keffiyeh worn around the neck. In January 2022, attorneys Thomas Renz and Leigh Dundas retrieved the DMED data from military whistleblowers, Drs. Leshikar opened the hood of the car, a Honda Accord, and with the engine still hot, began to disassemble it. You always got the sense from him that he was involved in something illegal, like some kind of crime ring. The vacation lasted nearly a week. Its not just combat trauma and moral injury, says Naylor. Watch the video below as Atty. Tier 1 operators have ascended so high in the lethal bureaucracy that they no longer exist. Sometimes when I would walk into Billys house, it was just everywhere., She personally observed, on two or three occasions, the same four guys cutting up and snorting lines of white powder. Could there be a serious drug problem going on at Fort Bragg? Personnel numbers are also kept secret, but two years ago, a retired Delta Force colonel, a veteran of the Iraq War, told me that the unit is made up of about 250 operators, plus another 2,000 support troops. We hope you dont mind as its expensive to pay for bandwidth and time to do this. What role do these bioweapon shots have on the number of unexpected and undetermined deaths? As soon as the rockets began to burst, We had to get out of there. Aside from suicide, overdose and complications from drug abuse including steroids was the leading cause of death. I did not get the impression that he was joking. I dont get intimidated by people easily. Eleven of the deaths remain. Fort Bragg stopped reporting the fatalities after June 2021, but the bodies continue to pile up. Fort Bragg soldier dies after he's found unresponsive | CBS 17 In March 2018, Mark and Laura Leshikar took their daughter to Disney World to celebrate her fifth birthday. The recent reports of fatal drug overdoses out of military installations like Fort Bragg are alarming, Sen. Markey said in a statement to Rolling Stone. Crime-scene technicians would have photographed it on December 2nd, when they turned aside the nylon blanket he was wrapped in and saw him barefoot and shirtless, shot multiple times in the chest. He sped off from the scene and was charged with a hit-and-run. Around 4 p.m., they arrived at Lavignes house, a cookie-cutter tract home at the end of a blank cul-de-sac. Thats when he made the statement that if I wanted my husband gone, he could take care of it, she says. In the bed of the truck and on the ground beside it were two dead men. She also retrieved her Glock from the bedroom and stuck it under a couch cushion. We would appreciate anyone, says Shelley Lynch, an FBI spokeswoman, who may have information about where the men were in the hours before their bodies were found to contact us. The FBI released a photo of Dumas truck, a dark-blue 2015 Dodge Ram, which was found abandoned in another location. They also released a better photo of him. On February 9, 2022, Seth reported the death of 83 soldiers at Fort Bragg in the 18 months ending in June 2021. Posted: Mar 26, 2022 / 05:15 PM EDT. Its not even clear exactly how many soldiers died at Fort Bragg in 2020. Fort Bragg Obituaries | Local Obits for Fort Bragg, CA - Legacy A A. But she was acquainted with Timothy Dumas, the 44-year-old veteran who was found dead alongside him. It did cite, however, what it described as an unhealthy sense of entitlement among special operators. In the iconography of American militarism, in the esoteric cult of special forces, the black censor bar across the eyes confers an unmistakably dark prestige. Read our Pledge HERE. Fort Bragg Deaths STATESIDE Spike (1 Every 3 days) So They Stopped Harpwrote: Fort Bragg soldiers have been turning up unresponsive in their barracks on a disturbingly regular basis since the beginning of 2020, including Caleb Smither, Terrance Salazar, Jamie Boger, Joshua Diamond, Matthew Disney, Mikel Rubino, Michael Hamilton, and numerous others who have not been named.. The same is true in the case of a young Ohioan, a Green Beret candidate, who in March was found unresponsive in his barracks. He made it a point to choose guys who played musical instruments or painted. According to Sarahs mother, Rhonda Phillips, on at least two occasions in 2020, the last being December 11th, Sarah reported Lewis to his unit, and informed them that she feared for her safety. On February 9, 2022, Seth reported the death of 83 soldiers at Fort Bragg in the 18 months ending in June 2021. Trial dates for the soldiers vary, beginning on May 31 for Becerra and ending with Cochell's trial, which is scheduled for Sept. 26 to 29. On March 28th, the Fayetteville police responded to an incident in which he was suspected of shooting into an occupied dwelling. Appropriate adverse action, which was previously initiated in response to substantiated misconduct, was being finalized at the time of Master Sgt. It makes me feel great, said Carole De Nola, when she learned of the letter. | At age 37, William Billy Lavigne II was a true Tier 1 operator, a master sergeant on the Armys most selective and clandestine task force. Both men had young daughters. Though the offense was a felony, he was not charged. Maybe We All Experience The Same Thing Masculinity Isnt Toxic, Our Erasure Of It Is, Does The Bible Describe the Earth as Flat? Fort Bragg soldier pronounced dead identified as major 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. COA and Hemp Information. The Idol: How HBOs Next Euphoria Became Twisted Torture Porn We have a lot of Delta Force members in our community, says Ballard, the police detective in Vass. Both girls witnessed what happened next. Fort Bragg stopped reporting the fatalities after June 2021, but the bodies continue to pile up. In just18 months, Fort Bragg lost over 80 soldiers from sudden and unexplained causes. The Armys Criminal Investigative Command, or CID, also concluded that the homicide was justified, likewise for reasons that it refuses to make public. His death was ruled a homicide. The two were found dead on the same day in June 2021, just two weeks after airborne master sergeant Martin Acevedo III was caught trafficking cocaine. Smith, Mary Jane ~ 01 March, 2023. He left the military in 2016, and for a time operated a nightclub in Fayetteville, which evidently brought him legal troubles. 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. The 9mm round, fired from a Taurus Millennium G2, missed the boy by about 18 inches. Dumas and his dreadlocked sidekick went into the apartment across the corridor, and she went into hers.