FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — Fort Campbell says a soldier who was chased by Georgia State Police after his wife was found dead at the post has died of a gunshot wound that was apparently self-inflicted during the pursuit. The post says 22-year-old Spec. Rico L. Rawls Jr. died about 2 p.m. Monday. Military police responding to an alleged domestic dispute in housing at the post found Jessica T. Rawls dead from an apparent gunshot wound Friday night. Her death remains under investigation. Police said Rico Rawls shot himself after a high speed chase on Saturday that started in Hamilton County in southeastern Tennessee. Georgia authorities said the suspect reached speeds of up to 120 mph before being forced to stop on I-75 in Bartow County near Lake Allatoona just before 3 a.m. He was taken to a hospital in critical condition and succumbed to the gunshot wound Monday afternoon. Rico Rawls was assigned to 5th Special Forces Group and worked as an information systems operator/analyst. He had been at Fort Campbell since January 2010 and was deployed to Iraq twice. source There are many tragedies that happened similar to this...But i was really sadden by this because this soldier was a friend of mine.....This was really unexpected considering that he was an athletic, big, and a kool guy with a family of his own despite his age...But what trigger this to happen? i dunno....I've never met his wife before because the last time i've talked/hanged out with him, he was still single and no kids....and I have never seen him overreacted when it comes to stress..... but regardless...... RIP and my condolences to his friends and his family... sry for this randomness PA'ers...but i just want to post this here to share my day of sadness.....pretty rare for me....
First of all, my condolences.. Did he experience combat when he was deployed to Iraq? I was reading a topic on Reddit about military service men and women coming back from deployment, and either due to PTSD from being in action or something, they could not easily re-integrate into society. Very sad to hear.
^thanks for coming by this thread...it's means alot ....as to whether he was in combat or not, i dunno...because it's been a few years since i communicated with him....he was in a MOS (25B, basically a military occupation that deals with communications, computers/networking) that doesnt require him to do patrols...tho it's sill very possible and common that he does....I didnt even kno that he was assigned in a special forces unit...all i kno was that he joined airborne school and became an airborne soldier...and then "a" deployment to iraq...i didnt even kno he went twice... he joined the army when he was 19 and he was a fairly new soldier in my unit about 3 years back...He was always a squared away guy...heck, we were even bunk buddies for awhile (that's how i get to kno him)..... It could be due to PTSD...but again, i kno him as a guy that could handle the stresses that deployment throw at you....Heck, i've been in combat before and yet, i'm ptsd-free tho i was still told to meet a counselor in the VA ....the only thing that really bothered me when i came back home was sleeping because i kept waking up consistently .....but other than that, i'm just like everyone else...
Some people can cope with PSTD more easily than others. People react differently coming back from deployment. Though I've never been in the military, some stories I've read had people saying "he seemed like he could handle the stress", but honestly, everyone is different and copes it differently. Many people seem like they can handle it, but can't. And simply because you are lucky enough to be able to handle it doesn't mean everyone else can either.
So very sorry to hear about another American soldier coming to such an ignoble end. May it have been PTSD? Sure. But it could have just as easily been attributed to other mundane causes like alcoholism, stress, or other seemingly innocuous reasons that the military had traditionally ignored. Years ago, I too had served overseas, but was lucky in that it was during a relatively peaceful time frame and in a pretty relaxed environment. But as a military policeman, one of the things that really made a profound impression on me was the staggering number of drunken domestic violence incidents that I was called to within dependent housing (for those that don't know, besides the barracks for single soldiers, military housing also includes an enclosed, private community populated by married soldiers and their families). These communities have people from all walks of life and the issues within them usually reflect the same general social dilemmas found in any other community in America. Despite it being more than 30 years ago, I remember one particularly chilling incident as it seems forever burnished in my mind. One late evening, we got called to the dependent community regarding a loud argument in one of the quarters. Upon our arrival we found the door ajar, so my partner and I walked in. The apartment was a shambles of broken dishes, with flower pots thrown against the walls, puncturing it in several places. The carpeting was ripped off the floor; there were beer bottles strewn about and several pieces of furniture laid overturned. What I'll never forget was in the midst of all that, a tiny woman with a face bloodied and eyes almost swollen shut, stood cowering in a corner with two whimpering young children behind her. On a sofa that had it's fabric slashed and half its stuffing pulled out, sat a drunken sergeant still sucking down another bottle of beer. His knuckles were covered in blood. It was hard to know if the blood was his wife's or if it was his where he had cut his hands from beating her so hard. It was a scene that I would never quite be able to forget. The military had always been a very insular community with a "we take care of our own" type of attitude. But having witnessed it first hand, I'm not so sure that it's up to the task then, or even now. IMHO, I think congress should take this as a wake up call to really seriously provide the types of in depth social service which the military community had long been chronically and sorely lacking. Soldiers and the families which support them are the life blood of America's defense. It's way past due for America to realize that we have to do more to keep them, not just physically, but morally and emotionally whole. Condolences to those affected by this most recent tragedy.
^thx for the feeds ralph i just cant believe Rawls would do something like this....he's a big and athletic black guy that gets almost a 300 in pt....but he had a VERY soft personality.... He's one of those that doesnt pick fights, let u say what u want, free and outgoing guy.....It's really hard to believe that someone like that would pull something like this....i just felt sorry for their daughter...... this isnt the first time that i experienced a fallen battle buddy...however, this is the first time i experience a suicidal battle buddy... DAM IT, RAWLS...u have a red beret already, trying and dreaming to get the green beret (which i will never accomplish), u got a family, a wife and a daughter....so Y? what MORE DO U WANT?
