Newswise — On the Monday after Mothers Day 2009, U.S. Army sergeant John Russell, charges allege, killed five fellow soldiers with an M-16 rifle at the Camp Liberty combat stress clinic in Baghdad, Iraq. His criminal defense attorneys blame clinic personnel and a broken military mental health system for the tragedy.
But in an exclusive interview with Weekly Scientist, one of the survivors—then an Army reserve psychiatrist—says that blame is misplaced and tells a different story.
Dr. Michael Jones was the last mental health professional John Russell saw before he went berserk. Among the caregivers defense attorneys have labeled “borderline criminal," Jones says an empathetic, well-trained team tried to help Sgt. Russell as much as they could in the few hours they had before the attack.
Russell will face the death penalty, military prosecutors announced in May. His defense team—led by a bombastic, high-profile Texas lawyer named James Culp—says their client may be innocent by reason of insanity—and caregiver negligence.
“Sgt. John Russell is facing death because the Army's mental health system failed him,” Culp wrote in a March 2012 memorandum. He has publicly branded Russell’s care “mental health mistreatment” and “a significant causal factor” in the massacre.
But Russell's mental health care involved all of about 2.5 hours, and he came to the clinic with a common complaint that had nothing to do with insanity: on-the-job stress, Jones says. In other words, Sgt. Russell had a problem the stress clinic was well-prepared to solve.
But "he didn't want help," Jones says. "He didn't want to get better. He wanted to get out of the Army."
Pre-trial posturing, meanwhile, has made Dr. Jones—already reeling from survivor’s guilt—the prime target of the defense team's blame game. He survived the shootings only to see his professionalism questioned and his name splashed across the media as the “real reason” Russell shot two of his good friends—Dr. Matthew Houseal, Jones' roommate in base housing; and Dr. Charlie Springle—and three other soldiers, young men with families.
Now, to set the record straight about the healthcare team he knew, Jones speaks for the first time outside a courtroom. His story is a close-up look at combat psychology, and the unpredictable nature of the human mind on the front lines.
READ THE EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW AThttp://www.weeklyscientist.com
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UNFRIENDLY FIRE: A U.S. Army psychiatrist remembers a notorious mass murder on the front lines in Iraq.
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