MURIEL DEAN “He told me that I didn't want to know what he had to do over there and what he'd seen and the things that had gone on and I never asked why.”

GLANTZ When Jamie Dean received orders to go to Iraq in the fall of 2006, he had already served in Afghanistan and had been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. … Muriel Dean is his widow.

DEAN “Jaime wasn’t one to open up anyway. The only thing he would ever say is “Nobody understands unless they’ve been there. You just don’t understand. And he told me that I didn’t want to know what he had to do over there. And the things he’d seen and the things that had gone one. And I never asked why.”
GLANTZ Muriel Dean says he husband started pulling away from her as the January 14th deployment date grew closer.

DEAN “A couple of weeks into December it started, more so around Christmas, the week of Christmas. He started doing little things for me as well just so I wouldn’t forget that he loved me. He bought me little things and would make me dinner and things like that, but in the same night he would withdraw. One minute he was doing really good things for me and telling me he loved me and the next thing he was withdrawing from me and from what I understand that’s there way of detaching themselves for where they have to leave.”

GLANTZ Then, at 9pm on Christmas Day, Jaime barricaded himself inside his father’s farm-house. He called his sister and told her he, quote just couldn’t “do it anymore” and fired a gunshot.
DEAN “He had been talking to her and telling her and telling her how he didn’t want to go back, he just couldn’t take it anymore, things like that so she called the police after she heard a gun-shot but he just fired in the air, he didn’t shoot himself.

GLANTZ In response to Jaime’s sister’s call to 911, the State Police and county Sherriff’s Deputies showed up in force. They cordoned off the house and fired tear gas inside. Both agencies brought in armored vehicles and the state police blew a hole in the right side of the house. Just past midnight on December 26th, a state police sharp-shooter shot Jaime Dean dead.

DEAN “He was on a family farm. There were no neighbors. There was nobody there with him so if he was going to hurt anybody it was going to be himself. Time was on their side. If they had left him alone, he would have calmed down. He would have gone to sleep. He would have been fine.”

GLANTZ Law enforcement officials say they had no choice but to shoot Jaime Dean, noting he had holed up with firearms and shot out at arriving police officers. But in May, the Maryland State Attorney’s office released a report on the incident. It called law enforcement’s response “progressively assaultive and militaristic. These tactics, the report reads, were at best flawed. There were no hostages, there was no emergency situation, and there was little probability of any civilian being threatened by Mr. Dean’s conduct.” …

GLANTZ Jamie Dean was not the first veteran to have a run-in with law enforcement before a second deployment in what officials in Washington call the "global war on terror".
In January 2005, for example, 19-year-old Andres Raya of Modesto, California walked out of a liquor store in a Central Valley town and fired off a couple of rounds from his rifle.
Police told the San Francisco Chronicle that when an officer pulled up, Raya shot him twice in the head, apparently at close range, then fled through nearby backyard.
A Marine on active duty, Raya had already been deployed to Iraq twice. His family told investigators Raya had expressed concern he would be shipped out again. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Raya served in the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines Regiment of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, which at that time had had more than 30 casualties during the war, mostly in Al Anbar province, a Sunni-dominated region that includes Fallujah and Ramadi.
Back in Maryland, Muriel Dean hopes her efforts to speak out will have an impact on police behaviour toward veterans in the future.

DEAN “God forbid, this situation happens again it needs to be handled differently. It happens everywhere that law enforcement goes into these situations all gung ho and it’s not good for them because these guys are trained just like the cops are. They’re trained to kill as well when they’re attacked like that. When they’re already in their minds in a war zone, you don’t put them back in there.”
The VA estimates 5,000 veterans commit suicide every year.
This is Aaron Glantz for “the War Comes Home, warcomeshome.org – a project of KFPA Radio.