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. The same is true in the case of a young Ohioan, a Green Beret candidate, who in March was found unresponsive in his barracks. Obituary 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.. Pvt. He was arrested for a final time on September 17th, in Fayetteville, this time on a prostitution charge. The problems persisted. 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. Army investigators have disclosed nothing, not even the identities of the other soldiers who were on the camping trip, one of whom was a young woman. The GAO opened its investigation in October 2019 in an attempt to understand a spate of deadly mishaps that keep occurring. Nathan Goodman, 36, of Hope Mills, died Jan. 14, 2020, in a free-fall training exercise near Eloy, Arizona. Maybe. Fort Bragg; which has nearly double the soldier population as Fort Hood, is reporting 24 deaths so far this year, with five of them happening in accidents, one homicide, seven from illness, nine by suicide and two still pending. 2020 Soldier Fatalities on Major Installations, January 1 2020 August 13 2020 (KWTX) Lewis followed her outside, holding their three-year-old daughter on one hip and a gun in the other hand. On several occasions, various people at Fort Bragg have offered to sell him tabs, Romero says, including the soldier from the camping trip. The cause of his death is under investigation by the Fort Bragg Criminal Investigation Division. Families want answers. To hear that such a high-powered group of senators had taken up the cause was very encouraging. Did he have demons? All of that has a cumulative effect., A damaged soul plagued by mental torment, and also more thoughtful, more introverted than his Delta Force teammates, is how Nicole describes Lavigne. He was looking to be helpful and to be part of the team.. The 50 Worst Decisions in Music History That was the only drug he was for; everything else he was against. Fort Bragg, North Carolina, is a military installation of the United States Army in North Carolina, and is one of the largest military installations in the world, with around 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. Most of Billys friends or associates, Ive talked to or met, says his father. 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. But he would be dead before his scheduled court appearance. Tier 1 operators have ascended so high in the lethal bureaucracy that they no longer exist. 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. Half of those deaths have been ruled suicides. Fort Bragg He was taken home that same night by some of his Delta Force teammates. The Department of Defense announced 25 total casualties of service members who died in combat or noncombat-related incidents throughout 2020. He was assigned to the Special Warfare Medical Group in October 2019, for medical rehabilitation of a training injury, officials said. To date, the House Armed Services Committee seems not to have noticed the similar pattern at Fort Bragg. Fort Bragg Zygarowski, who enlisted in the Army in 2018, was a mechanic assigned to Here's a look at 12 Fort Bragg soldiers who died in 2020 It included Dumas name and the type of handgun he used, but its not clear if he was taken into custody. We are far from the flagpole and are expected to be incorruptible.. The cause of death was homicide. Rachael Riley. Image in illustration by Alamy. They are ghosts. Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told Rolling Stone that recent medical studies showed a fast and dramatic rise in the number of fatal overdoses among active-duty military men. Were still looking into it.. 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. He had a strong personality. People not inclined to be team players, he explained, somewhat paradoxically. 0:04. Fort Bragg 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. In addition to Rolling Stones investigation of Fort Bragg, the senators letter to Secretary Austin cited a number of other alarming reports, including: evidence of rising overdose deaths among veterans and in military hospitals; an incident in March of this year in which five West Point cadets nearly died from taking fentanyl-laced cocaine; and the June 2021 death of Pfc. The remaining three are still at large from incidents in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Queens, N.Y., and Detroit, Mich. Sgt. He was from a suburb of Los Angeles called Chino. In recent years, whistleblowers have alleged that the use of hard drugs is widespread among special operators. He was a very hostile individual, says a detective who used to rent a house from Dumas. Mysterious Fort Bragg Deaths Come After a Paratrooper Was Decapitated Matthew Disney, 20, of Aberdeen, Maryland. At the relatively young age of 37, after a full 20 years in the military, he would be entitled to a substantial pension and lifelong benefits. He was the oddity amongst the special-forces guys I was introduced to., In the one picture of Lavigne that exists in the public domain, his official Army portrait, his head looks like a white egg, and his face has the pale and drawn appearance of a man who has just shorn off a beard and shaved his scalp to the skin. He was trying to get into Buddhism. He was getting clean.. We were always poor growing up, his sister Griselda says. She sent him a text message and agreed to hear him out on condition they meet at Leshikars grave site. Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3528. 2 Soldiers Die at Fort Bragg on the Same Day in Unrelated Incidents David Eugene Hughes Jr., 32, of Fresno, California, died when his motorcycle ran off the road and hit a utility pole Sept. 4 in Fayetteville. Spc. 2023 Rolling Stone, LLC. It was much easier, ironically, to get information on Fort Bragg-based personnel who died in foreign countries. Thank you for your service. Theyre covering something up. But he scared me.. Accidental? I called every day for a month. Thirteen U.S. service members were killed in the attack and 45 were wounded. William J. Lavigne II, 37, and Timothy Dumas, 44. Both had been killed by gunshots, and according to news reports, shell casings were scattered on the ground. Indeed, you would have to pore over the news archives long and hard to find a single negative story on the unit, whose official name is the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, also known as the Combat Applications Group. Grace Community Church had just opened a last-minute temporary shelter for the homeless the previous night. Four Fort Bragg soldiers died while deployed in 2019. 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. Ballard, the only full-time detective in Vass, didnt know Billy Lavigne. In 2016, he was reassigned to 1st Special Warfare Training Group as a senior instructor, then chief instructor. His dream was to go to pharmacy school. Mount, 25, from St. George, Utah, died July 21 as the result of a vehicle rollover accident while conducting reconnaissance operations, July 21 in Eastern Syria. What is the protocol for informing family in the event of an overdose, including non-fatal overdoses. Then 9/11 happened, touching off the longest period of war in U.S. history. Mount is survived by his wife and parents. Families want answers. The police came and he was arrested in possession of cocaine, a digital scale, a crack pipe, a revolver, a hunting rifle, a snub-nosed pistol, and a pump-action shotgun. In the few photos of Delta Force that exist in the public domain, their faces are blurred or blacked out, their identities classified. Latest Obituaries in Fort Bragg, NC | p.2 - Echovita Who Where Receive obituaries Bessie Carine March 25, 2023 (90 years old) View obituary Robert Ingram March 8, 2023 (53 years old) View obituary Those two would always pull some shit, she says. In the bed of the truck and on the ground beside it were two dead men. The autopsy showed that he had been shot from multiple angles, including from behind. Dumas and his dreadlocked sidekick went into the apartment across the corridor, and she went into hers. Over the past 20 years of continuous war, from the snowy passes of the Hindu Kush to the desert scrublands of Somalia, JSOCs budget and autonomy have continuously grown, and so has the scope of its mission.
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