A day before the public learned the name of the soldier accused of methodically slaughtering 16 civilians in Afghanistan, his lawyer called a news conference and sketched a different portrait of Robert Bales: that of a loving father and devoted husband who had been traumatized by a comrade's injury and sent into combat one too many times.
A recent Army health report draws an alarming profile of a fighting force more prone to inexcusable violence amid an "epidemic" of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the mental breakdown attracting speculation as a factor in a massacre of Afghan civilians this month.
Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales remembers little about the night he is accused of slaughtering 16 Afghan civilians in a nighttime shooting rampage, his lawyer says.
Bypassed for a promotion and struggling to pay for his house, Robert Bales was eyeing a way out of his job at a Washington state military base months before he allegedly gunned down 16 civilians in an Afghan war zone, records and interviews showed as a deeper picture emerged Saturday of the Army sergeant's financial troubles and brushes with the law.
The soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers was on his way to a U.S. military prison, a senior defense official said Friday, as the soldier's attorney spoke of the impact the fighting had on his client.
After five days cloaked in military secrecy, the soldier suspected in a massacre of 16 Afghan civilians has finally been identified, adding a critical detail to the still-sketchy portrait just beginning to emerge. A senior U.S. official says the soldier accused in the killings is Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales.
They are questions already being debated: Did the soldier suspected of killing Afghan villagers have post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD? And did the people who sent him back to war after he was injured properly determine he was mentally fit to return?
A federal judge sentences "Barefoot Bandit" Colton Harris-Moore to 6 1/2 years in prison for his infamous two-year, international crime spree of break-ins, and boat and plane thefts that ended in 2010.
Colton Harris-Moore gained authority-mocking, cult status as he ran from the law for two years in stolen boats, cars and planes. Now, he faces years in prison.
