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Family of GI seeks action after his suicide

DENVER — A soldier facing a rape charge told his family that he didn’t commit the crime and was taking the blame for somebody else shortly before he jumped to his death.

Pvt. Tommie Edward Jones, whose family said he suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome, jumped off an interstate overpass to his death March 25 outside an entrance to Fort Carson near Colorado Springs.

Post spokesman Maj. Sean Ryan on Monday said Jones, 27, was scheduled for a hearing that day.

Jones faced charges of rape, sodomy, and several other allegations, including having sex with several partners in a hot tub in public view and videotaping another person’s intimate parts without the person’s consent. The alleged crimes happened on Feb. 11, 2007.

Ryan did not immediately know if Jones’ hearing was a court-martial or another court proceeding. The rape charge he faced carried a maximum penalty of death, but Ryan said defendants rarely get the maximum penalty.

“His mamma stood up with him in the hotel room till 2, 2:30 in the morning” before his death, his stepfather, David Screws told The Associated Press by phone from his home in Hanceville, Ala. “He told her, ‘I took the blame for somebody else. That’s what you do when you’re in the military.”‘

Ryan said the case remained under investigation.

Jones’ mother, Dorothy Screws, told The Cullman (Ala.) Times that her son suffered symptoms of PTSD after seeing combat in Iraq last year. She said she would push for a law requiring soldiers to undergo some type of psychological therapy after they return from intense combat.

Jones was assigned to the 1/8th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. More than 1,000 soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team are in the middle of their third tour in Iraq.

“I can’t save my son now .... I want to save somebody,” Screws told The Cullman (Ala.) Times. “If I can save one soldier, it will be worth it.”

“If they can make them tote 150 pounds on their backs and march ... why can’t they make it mandatory to get help?” she asked.

Jones mentioned a few of the traumatic events he experienced in Iraq to his mother shortly before his death, but didn’t talk about them in detail, David Screws said, adding that he returned from war a different man.

“It wasn’t Tommie,” David Screws said. “Before he went to Iraq, you could walk up behind him and put your hand on his shoulder and say, ‘Hey boy, whatcha doing?’ But now you couldn’t do it, he was too jumpy... Like he was on guard.”

Awareness of suicide among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans was heightened in early 2007 when the Army said its suicide rate in 2006 rose to 17.3 per 100,000 troops — the highest level in 26 years of record-keeping.

Last October, the AP reported that preliminary research from the Department of Veterans Affairs had found that from the start of the war in Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, and the end of 2005, 283 troops who served in the wars who had been discharged from the military had committed suicide.

“If you check that blank (mental health problems), you never go up in rank, you stay right where you are,” David Screws said. “That’s wrong. If you got a problem, you need to talk to somebody, because it certainly helps to talk. That’s what he told his mother.”

The Department of Defense recently announced a new policy where soldiers will no longer have to reveal previous mental health treatment unless it involved violence or was court-ordered.