Nevada Soldier With PTSD Prescribed 14 Drugs Before Police Shootout

Nevada Soldier With PTSD Prescribed 14 Drugs Before Police Shootout

Tim King Salem-News.com (LAS VEGAS, Nv.)

"Well Sue, for what it is worth, I greatly respect your courage through all of this. I don't know how much more of a challenge you could be faced with, but I do know that law enforcement in the backwaters of Nevada can be shabby."  Tim King - Salem-News.com

Sue Lamoureux's dedication to her husband Pat, an Iraq combat veteran incarcerated for a shooting that happened Sept. 19, 2008, in Pahrump, Nevada, is more than steadfast. He has been locked down since that fateful night.

Pat survived really awful circumstances while serving in Iraq. He's haunted by the memory of a girl in her early teens who blew herself up near his heavy equipment transport truck. He said she, "came out of nowhere."

He talked about a firefight near the airport in Baghdad. Staff Sergeant Robert J. Brown, Lamoureux's convoy commander on the majority of his missions, talked about how the convoys were shot at "day and night." "If you stopped, you got shot. We were sitting ducks outside of that wall, wire, perimeter or sand berm."

Brown said, "When Pat says what happened at the airport, that happened." Any of us can only imagine. I don't know very much about Iraq, but I have been to that airport and it isn't in an extremely secure part of the city. I can only imagine how horrific the circumstances were that this Nevada soldier survived[1].

Pat also talked about an old man with a donkey, who would not stop when soldiers ordered him to and was shot. Sue told a reporter that, "To this day Pat believes the old man may have been deaf, and the image of him haunts Pat."

These stories leave behind many important, unanswered questions. These soldiers were put through things that no human being can easily withstand. Pat was eventually evacuated for a respiratory disorder. Just after that, one of his friends and fellow soldiers from Las Vegas was killed when his truck was struck, as he was changing a tire on his military vehicle in Kuwait.

Staff Sgt. Cameron Sarno was in the same Army Reserve group, the Las Vegas-based 257th "Rolling Thunder" Transportation Company.

Sue Lamoureux told the Las Vegas Review Journal, "That night before things spiraled out of control, Pat was screaming, 'Sarno' at me. I told him there wasn't anything about that situation that was his fault."

She added that he screamed again. "Sarno, you don't know.... I could have kept him from dying."

This is what he was talking about before things spun out of control that night at Terrible's Lakeside RV Park and Casino in Pahrump, Nevada.

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