Posted on 01/16/2005 4:05:48 PM PST by pickemuphere
CERES, CA-January 16, 2005 — A Marine who killed one town police officer and wounded another one was a gang member who was high on cocaine, not a combat veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress, police said.
Investigators said they are discounting a theory that Lance Cpl. Andres Raya, 19, may have instigated a "suicide by cop" – provoking officers to shoot him – because he did not want to return to Iraq.
"During our investigation, we found he wasn't due to go back to Iraq, never faced combat situations and never even fired his gun," Stanislaus County Sheriff's Deputy Jason Woodman said Saturday.
Raya shot the two officers with a rifle outside a liquor store on Jan. 9 before police returned fire and killed him.
Raya's family and friends denied he was involved with a gang and said he was changed by the seven months he spent in Iraq before returning in September to Camp Pendleton near San Diego. They said he became withdrawn and unable to hold a conversation, and told them gruesome stories of house-to-house combat and of watching Marines commit suicide. They said he questioned the war and said he did not want to go back.
But Woodman said investigators found that Raya's transport unit never saw combat and that he was recently transferred to a unit scheduled to be deployed to Okinawa.
(Excerpt) Read more at abclocal.go.com ...
The story sounded too custom built for the media.
I doubted his "Rambo" status from the start...
and other than Free Republic, we will read this where? The "death by cop" story was all over the media a week ago.
Yup, it really sounds like death by being a punk.
Yup, it really sounds like death by being a punk.
You mean the NY Times was being irresponsible, just to score another hit in the public's perception of the Iraq war? Hard to believe. I'm sure the correction will appear above the fold too.
Had this been ten or fifteen years ago there would have been no one to refute the PTSD story.
How dare these guys reveal this new and correct information? It's not the party line!!!
I can go either way on this story... mainly because the police around here (the central San Joaquin Valley where it happened) are VERY trigger happy.
I'll bet his record in the Marines is marred by busted rank for problems.
I'm surprised Dan Blather didn't break this story from his retirement bunker...
He never even faced a combat situation...why does this seem SO familiar?
I doubt it. He was a 19 year old Lance Corporal. Thats a good rank to be at 19. Even if he had been busted it would take awhile ot reach Lcpl again.
He was not a big druggy, but was also an ignorant, gang banger cockroach.
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