Marine of the Year Fires Into Crowd

This story is heartbreaking, infuriating, frustrating…and probably all too familiar to those who remember the Vietnam War era:

A U.S. Marine who was named "Marine of the Year" last month for his service in Iraq pleaded not guilty on Monday to attempted murder after he opened fire on a crowd outside a Massachusetts nightclub, wounding two people.

Daniel Cotnoir, who has been treated for post-war stress since serving in Iraq where he worked as a mortician preparing bodies of U.S. soldiers for burial, was accused by police of firing a shotgun from a window of his apartment in Lawrence into a group of revelers early Saturday after having complained to police about the noise.

Two people were injured in the incident.

[…]

Cotnoir felt threatened by the crowd after a bottle thrown from below crashed through his closed window and cut him in the finger, [his lawyer, Robert Kelley] said.

To protect himself, his wife and children, Cotnoir fired a warning shot into what he thought was a safe area but the bullet ricocheted off cement and fragments hit two people, Kelley said.

The veteran was recently voted Marine of the Year 2005 by the Marine Corps Times for being an "'everyday hero' who exemplifies outstanding professionalism, concern for other service members and community service."

In an interview with a local newspaper, Cotnoir described collecting bloodied body parts of dead soldiers after blasts in Iraq and said he had sought counseling at a veterans hospital after returning home because his war-time job took a heavy psychological toll on him.

Clearly his attorney’s laying out his defense for the media when he talks about the guy protecting his wife and children and firing a warning shot, but it does sound a little, well, fabricated. I mean, the guy was dealing with an annoying bunch of idiots outside a nightclub, and he shot at them; most of us might want to the same, but we’d likely just yell out the window or call the cops, options that failed to register with Cotnoir, probably because he had a horrific job to do in the middle of a war zone, and it cracked him. So he picked up his gun and started shooting. Not what most of us would do, but then again, most of us haven’t spent a tour of duty collecting our pals’ disembodied bits, either.

War of choice.

Didn’t have to go.

Not related to 9/11.

Just sayin’.