Standoff prompts daycare evacuation (police & 23 yr old back from Iraq)

[sabra]

http://www.kobtv.com/index.cfm?viewer=storyviewer&id=25938&cat=NMTOPSTORIES

BREAKING NEWS: Standoff prompts daycare evacuation

Police have evacuated a northeast Albuquerque daycare near a standoff between police and a 23-year-old man just back from Iraq.

Albuquerque police say the man is holed up in his garage near the intersection of Phoenix and Muriel.

A couple dozen kids were evacuated from the daycare just down the street. Also, police put Matheson Park Elementary on lockdown, although only staff members are in the building.

Police are trying to make contact with the man, who they believe may have post-traumatic stress disorder.

[sarcasmo]

1. Bookmark this, because it will not be the only time someone back from

Iraq is in a standoff.

[sabra]

3. indeed. this is the side of war that people tend to forget...

until it's breaking news on their local station :-(

[Dunvegan]

2. This is tragic.

Just tragic.

[LeighAnn]

10. What's tragic is the tank and riot gear

It doesn't say this guy did anything... just says he's holed up in his garage, which, last I heard, is still legal in most states. Looks like they are making quite a scene out of it... I'm sure this will be good for the poor guy's PTSD.

[uppityperson]

4. More vet stories, of course they have PTSD. argh argh argh

I hope it ends peacefully and he gets the help he needs. Had a vet problem here late 1 night. Got in trouble for leaving the scene of an accident. Car accident, driver of 1 bailed and ran to mother's house. Was an Iraq vet, didn't know how he got to mom's house, figured that accident set off his "roadside bomb/IED=RUN!" reflex.

[RebelOne]

5. Just had a co-worker not long returned from Iraq

almost go postal at my office. Can't go into detail because some that I work with read this forum and we were told not to discuss it.

[UpInArms]

6. This is so not good :(

Ruined lives are the hallmark of war, but I guess since all the chickenhawks had never been in war, they didn't care. It would not be them or theirs.

:mad:

[babylonsister]

7. And these are (some of) the soldiers (w/PTSD) they're

sending back to Iraq. :(

[MindPilot]

8. And of course the M$M will paint the vets with the broad brush of PTSD

Another crazy vet holed up in his garage...standoff...deranged...violent...etc etc.

Pretty soon they'll be telling employers not to hire any of those crazed veterans, and the word will be out not to rent to vets or sell them a house. Fuckers. :mad:

[gratuitous]

9. Your tax dollars at work

Okay, these little expenditures of extra police work won't get into the official budget for the Iraq war, but we wind up paying for them just the same. Five guys? Maybe ten guys? Every month, someone's going to have to stop what they're doing and deal with one of these men. Hopefully, it's nothing more than sitting in companiable silence while the guy processes what happened to him. But the more urgent cases, like our friend in Albuquerque, will require an armed police response, accompanied by fervent prayers that nobody gets shot.

But this is what war does. Every time. To every one. Some deal with the trauma better than others, but some surely will toddle off into an unholy netherworld of dark thoughts, emotions and deeds. That's why you don't go into war if you have any choice. That's why you don't pump your fist and say "Feels good" just as you're about to go on national television to announce that you've started a war. That's why you don't sit in front of your television, popping open beers and cheering the pretty flashes in the night sky over a foreign land.

There's nothing sentimental or mooshy about wanting to avoid war. It's a cold-eyed, steely realism, of clearer vision than anything conjured up by the war-mongers. Sooner or later, the men and women we send off to kill and die in war come home, and the ongoing price of their experience is a society in which we have to endure things like an armed standoff just down the street from a child care center. You want to talk about reality? Someone could get killed here, and for what? To silence a gibbering demon in a damaged mind? A luckless bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time or a police officer who kissed his wife and headed out the door for another day on the job this morning might have just seen their last sunrise.

And the people that set this into motion don't give a flying fuck. They're reaping personal financial benefits from the blood being spilled, whether it's in Tikrit, or Baghdad, or Fallujah, or Albuquerque. For public consumption, they'll look sad and stern, make appropriate clucking noises, and sigh heavily about the "price" of freedom. Well, we're paying a price, all right, but it isn't for freedom.

[paparush]

11. Gulf War I gave us Tim McVeigh and the DC Sniper (among others)

Who knows what havoc Bush's insane clusterf*ck is going to wreak here at home.

[Rose Siding]

12. He let the children go

I pray there's someone wise and compassionate to negotiate with him.

[Rex]

13. He served faithfully.

I hope beyond all things that he can be taken alive and given the treatment the govt so obviously neglected. No one can tell me they didn't see the signs.

[Hekate]

14. Tsk. Jenna, Barbara2, and Mary C. STILL aren't in noble cause uniform!

What are those gals and their parents waiting for? I ask you. :sarcasm:

My heart is heavy for our returning vets and the slashed vets benefits.

Hekate

[kainah]

15. ended without violence

Last Update: 05/24/2006 5:10:27 PM
By: Todd Dukart
Video

A police standoff in northeast Albuquerque ended peacefully Wednesday afternoon with the subject taken into custody.

Albuquerque police surrounded a home near the intersection of Phoenix and Muriel around 6 a.m. Wednesday after a domestic disturbance. When they got there, Pfc. Matthew Vargas, 23, threatened suicide.

Vargas had served two tours in Iraq, and had recently been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to his family. Vargas was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division.

http://www.kobtv.com/index.cfm?viewer=storyviewer&id=25938&cat=NMTOPSTORIES

[pezdespencer]

16. I've seen it before

When I was in high school I went to stay the night at a Friends house. His dad was a vietnam vet and this was 20 years after the war mind you. He tore the floor out of his bed room and dug a hole under the floor and put sand bags around it this is where he slept every night in a bunker in his bed room.

That night was the first time I seen this bunker it freaked me out a little bit but I was like what ever, till about 3 am when I hear his dad screaming at the dogs next for barking he's yelling you better shut those fucking dogs up before I kill you and your dogs. Well I thought hes just yelling a bunch of BS to get the guy next door to quite his dogs. Well 10 Min's later I'm on the couch and I see his dad coming out of his room with combat boots on and nothing else but a nickle plated 45 I about shit myself he proceed to walk out the back door and kill all 4 of his neighbors dogs and then starts firing round at the guys house till the gun was empty. Then walks back in the house and says good night guys and goes back to his bunker err room.

Well needles to say I walked 12 miles home after that lmao

Thats not all though not even a month later my friend talks me into coming over to his house in the day time to chill. So i get there and after about an hour a guy pulls up to the house with his girl friend and a baby in the car he gets out with a bat and says my friend owes him money for some pot he bought and he was gonna smash his head in if he didn't pay well his dad was sitting on the porch when this guy gets out of the car and starts screaming about 20 dollars his dad puts down the news paper slowly gets up and pulls out a gun a fires about 10-15 rounds into the guys car with a women and child siting in it. Then points the gun at the guy and pulls the trigger the gun was empty thank god at that point. then he says wait here for a min I need to reload ill be back and slow walks into the house for more ammo.

Well about 20 Min's later the police show up at his house and behind them is the car he shot up to my utter amazement the police do nothing to my friends dad they arrest the guy with the bat for threatening my friend with a bat.