Posted by sakerfa on April 28, 2010
(AntiWar) – The moment that Austin police officer Wayne Williamson began unloading his pistol in a filled parking lot was probably the first time he realized he hadn’t left Iraq too far behind.
Williamson never hit his target –a fleeing, “possibly armed” suspect – but only one of the bullets he discharged in the parking lot was ever found. It was lodged in the back seat of a car in which two children, a 14-year-old girl and a four-month-old baby, had been sitting (miraculously, neither was injured). There were no excuses or cover-ups, however – Williamson was subsequently terminated from his nine-year career as a police officer.
Williamson is one of thousands of veterans who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), though he had not been treated for it before the aforementioned incident on March 14, 2007. A National Guardsman who left his job at the Austin Police Department (APD) to go to war in 2005, Williamson saw heavy combat in Tikrit before coming home and going back on patrol. He later told a reporter how a fleeing suspect like the one he had encountered in the parking lot would have been handled in Iraq.
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