Category: Security

A New York State Trooper from the Mohawk Valley continues to advance on “The Voice.”

Tom Nitti, a 31-year-old singer from New Hartford, N.Y., won in the Battle Rounds Tuesday night with his performance of Cody Johnson’s “Til You Can’t.” Nitti’s soulful voice impressed judge Reba McEntire, beating out fellow Team Reba member Dylan Carter.

“Dylan and Tom could be the next Brooks & Dunn,” McEntire said. “They are so talented but I had to choose Tom because he has continued to impress me. I love his soul country. It just made my heart feel good.”

Nitti almost didn’t make it past the “The Voice” Blind Auditions last month, but got a last-second chair turn from McEntire with his country twist on Stevie Wonder’s classic ““Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours).” Fellow judges John Legend, Gwen Stefani and Niall Horan all said they liked his unique voice, featuring a soulful “twang,” and were glad he was on Reba’s team.

“Tom, I keep getting blown away because to emote the way you did at the end, it just kept building and building,” Stefani said on Tuesday’s episode.

Nitti, who grew up in an Italian/Puerto Rican family that listened to a wide range of musical genres, previously auditioned for “The Voice” eight years ago. He withdrew when he was accepted to the Police Academy program for New York State Troopers at the same time, according to his grandfather.

Tom Nitti entered the military after graduating high school and served in Afghanistan, where he sustained injuries and was awarded the Purple Heart. After his military service, Tom followed in his father’s footsteps and joined law enforcement, becoming a NYS Trooper in 2015. Nitti now trains new troopers at the New York State Police Academy and performs weekly, including the “National Anthem” at official events, while raising two children.

“The Voice” airs Mondays and Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC. Episodes can be streamed on FuboTV (free trial), DirecTV Stream (free trial), and Sling (half off the first month).

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© 2023 Advance Local Media LLC

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

The government of El Salvador is charging a new $1,000 fee for passengers from African countries that fly into its capital’s international airport, a measure that comes as countries in the Western Hemisphere aim to stem a record flow of migration across the region.

Salvadorean port authorities said that the measure would be applied to passengers in transit earlier this month, and that the tariffs were for “airport improvements” as more passengers were entering, leaving, and connecting through San Salvador this year compared to previous ones.

“The Government of President Nayib Bukele is working hard on modernization and expansion projects at the El Salvador International Airport, in order to provide a first-class service to all users and passengers who circulate through the air terminal,” reads a statement from the airport agency.

But experts say the tariffs could be meant to keep migrants who want to reach the U.S.-Mexico border from traveling through El Salvador. The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration recently noted that more African migrants are flying directly into Central America to bypass the dangerous Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia, which hundreds of thousands of migrants have used this year to as they begin their travel north.

“This could be an attempt to reduce secondary travel of travelers coming to El Salvador who then could potentially try to make it to the United States,” said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.

Ruiz Soto noted that people from many of the countries on the list need to get visas and purchase expensive tickets to travel to El Salvador, so the new measure will likely be an additional barrier for those who see the country as a springboard to the United States.

The list of nations El Salvador published that will see the $1,000 fees includes over 50 countries in continental Africa as well as its offshore island nations, such as the Seychelles and São Tomé and Príncipe. Nationals from India are also included.

Airlines will have to send the government a daily list of passengers from those countries as well as their flight information in and out of the country, the airport agency said. The airlines will then be charged the fee plus tax for every passenger from those countries they fly in.

Colombian multinational airline Avianca said on its website that the fees have to be paid by passengers before boarding their flights. But it warned that it was Salvadorean authorities who control who got in and out of the country.

“Even if you pay the fee, there is a possibility that, upon your arrival in El Salvador, the [government] may deny your transit through the country,” the airline said.

The International Organization for Migration said last month that while the number of migrants from African countries moving through the Darién Gap had dropped by 65% between January and July, to about 4,100 people, Honduras had registered an increase of 553% in people coming through the country’s southern border, which it shares with Nicaragua, at 19,412 people.

The announcement of the Salvadorean measure also came days before Brian Nichols, the U.S. State Department assistant secretary for Western Affairs visited El Salvador. Nicholas said that he had met with President Bukele and discussed “mutual efforts to address irregular migration.”

At a recent summit about the region’s irregular migration hosted by Mexico, El Salvador’s vice president, Felix Ulloa, said the country had been able to reduce its own irregular migration by cracking down on gangs and street violence.

“In El Salvador we took responsibility as a state and decided to attack the structural causes that generate emigration,” he said, adding that most of the exodus came from rural areas.

Nicaragua has allowed thousands of migrants from Cuba, Haiti and several African countries to fly directly into Managua’s international airport when their final destination is the U.S. border, a move migration experts and critics of leader Daniel Ortega say is a weaponization of foreign policy.

Nicaragua enacted visa-free travel for Cubans in 2021, saying that it was because many people on the island have family in Nicaragua and that it was a way to promote tourism and commerce between the two countries.

But elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere, governments appear to be tightening up visas requirements and creating new travel restrictions amid record flows of migrants moving through Central America.

In recent months, more Haitians have used Nicaragua’s main airport as a springboard to the U.S.-Mexico border, allowing them to skip the dangerous Darien Gap altogether. Haitians, after Venezuelans and Ecuadorians, are the third leading nationality of people crossing the jungle, which has seen a record 408,972 crossers this year.

But on Monday, Haiti’s government suspended all flights to Nicaragua, leading to frustrated passengers who had paid thousands of dollars for a ticket out of their homeland. As of Oct. 22, Mexico requires that migrants for whom the Mexican government requires visas to enter the country have visitor visas just to transit through its international airports, regardless of how long they will be in the country.

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© 2023 Miami Herald

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A Chicago police officer is under investigation for striking an eighth grade boy earlier this year as at least one school employee and the teen’s classmates looked on, the Tribune has learned.

The Cook County state’s attorney’s office began looking into Officer Craig Lancaster’s off-duty conduct after a surveillance recording emerged showing him hitting a 14-year-old student near his throat as the boy walked into school. The video does not show the teen interacting with Lancaster before the physical contact or doing anything obvious to provoke it.

The incident lasted less than 30 seconds, but Chicago Police Department critics have long argued that these types of small, untold occurrences erode trust between CPD and the community. The case — which has been under investigation for the past five months — has grown even more confounding as the officer’s defense attempts to paint the student as a menacing teenager who needed to be subdued because he posed a threat to others, which is not apparent in the video.

The Tribune obtained a copy of the video, which does not have sound, as captured on a school security camera. The footage serves as the cornerstone of the criminal investigation and a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by the student’s family against the officer and the city of Chicago.

The incident occurred May 18 at Gresham Elementary on the city’s South Side, where students were lining up outside the building’s entrance on a chilly spring morning.

As he did most days, JaQuwaun Williams, then 14, played pickup basketball with a friend on the playground before school and waited until the last possible moment to head to class. On the game’s final shot, the teen said, his layup was blocked and he landed hard on his back.

He thought he was fouled. His friend insisted it was a clean stuff.

The boys took their disagreement with them as they headed toward the school with just two minutes before the first bell. JaQuwaun — a lanky shooting guard with dreams of playing ball for the legendary Simeon high school team — told the Tribune he muttered under his breath about the supposed foul the entire way.

Around the same time, according to the family’s lawsuit, Lancaster pulled up to the school to visit Yana Cruz, an upper-level math teacher described as the officer’s “personal companion” in a school incident report. The off-duty officer, wearing civilian clothes, hugs Cruz, the video shows. She, in turn, kisses his cheek and continues directing students inside the building.

The recording shows the couple chatting as JaQuwaun, wearing a bright green backpack, and his friend come around the corner and head toward the entrance. They also are talking, the final play still a topic of discussion, according to JaQuwaun.

As the two boys head toward the door, Cruz appears to say something to JaQuwaun and redirect him toward an area where other eighth grade students are waiting for their turn to come inside the building. JaQuwaun continues walking, his hands at his side, making no obvious sign to indicate he heard the teacher.

The video shows Lancaster then stepping into JaQuwaun’s path and forcefully striking him in the throat area, sending the teen reeling several feet backward. His friend, who is in the sixth grade, enters the building without any obstruction.

“I saw my math teacher and that’s when I blinked and opened my eyes and he was just right there,” JaQuwaun said of Lancaster. “I just felt a lot of force in my neck. I was just shocked.”

The eighth grader did not try to fight back, despite being a half-foot taller than Lancaster. Instead, the video shows JaQuwaun with a confused look on his face as he makes a questioning gesture with his hands. Lancaster, meanwhile, keeps walking toward JaQuwaun.

“My mom always told me if somebody puts their hands on you, don’t hit them. Just go tell somebody,” the teen told the Tribune.

In the video, Cruz steps in between JaQuwaun and Lancaster, then directs the student to go stand near a wall. He obeys the order with seemingly no pushback while his classmates watch.

Around this time, a school security guard appears on the recording and watches from a parking lot several yards away.

Cruz speaks with Lancaster for a few seconds, and Lancaster heads toward his car. The video shows him staring down JaQuwaun as he goes, stopping in front of the student at one point.

According to the lawsuit filed by the teen’s family, the officer yelled that he was going to “beat the (expletive)” out of JaQuwaun.

In the video, the teen looks away from the officer and stands rigidly against the wall.

At the same time, the school security guard, David McDaniel, hops over the parking lot fence and confronts Lancaster. According to a redacted incident report written on school letterhead, Lancaster lifted his shirt when McDaniel approached and “revealed a badge and gun holster.”

It’s unclear whether the holster held a weapon, according to the report.

As the two men talk, Cruz motions for JaQuwaun and the other students to go inside, the video shows. The teen walks past his math teacher and again holds his hands up as if to ask what happened. The teacher points him inside.

Seconds later, Lancaster gets in his car and drives away.

McDaniel was interviewed for the incident report, which describes the altercation as an “assault-physical.” The document also refers to JaQuwaun as the “victim.”

Lancaster’s attorney gave a statement to the Tribune saying that the officer intervened in the situation because the teen posed a threat to both students and staff.

“Officer Lancaster is a decorated Chicago police officer who was legally at the school when the minor child became a danger to the students and the staff,” wrote Tim Grace, a prominent Chicago attorney who frequently handles police misconduct cases. “He acted in a manner to protect the children and staff from a student who clearly was a threat to all present. He was acting within the scope of his duties as a law enforcement officer and acted in a manner that is consistent with the rules of the Chicago Police Department and laws of the state of Illinois.”

Grace did not respond to a follow-up question from a Tribune reporter asking what alleged threat the teen posed. After Lancaster strikes JaQuwaun, neither the officer nor school employees do anything to indicate immediate danger.

To the contrary, Cruz moves closer to the teen, casually touches him on the arms and instructs him to stand near more than a dozen other students. The video shows Lancaster leaves the schoolyard less than a minute after the incident, and JaQuwaun is allowed inside the school without further scrutiny.

“It’s the typical CPD playbook,” said Jordan Marsh, JaQuwaun’s attorney. “It’s not an original defense. CPD officers often blame victims for their misconduct, and it often bears no relation to the facts.”

The officer’s defense also may feed into the community’s distrust of the department, Marsh said, because at least a dozen students witnessed an officer strike their classmate. The incident — though brief and without permanent physical injury — will stay in their memories and be repeated to others, the attorney said.

“JaQuwaun and the rest of these kids are going to be skeptical for the rest of their lives about whether the police are there to actually protect them or just hurt them,” Marsh said. “If they weren’t already cynical, they definitely are now.”

Lancaster, 54, is a 30-year Chicago police veteran who began his career with the department as a civilian employee.

His supervisors have recognized him over the years through various department commendations, including when he and fellow officers on the department’s mass transit team nabbed a suspect accused of sexually abusing and battering teenage girls on the CTA.

But, according to city records, Lancaster also has faced nearly 30 allegations of misconduct during a 20-year span. The majority were use-of-force complaints, including in 2004 and 2006 when suspects in separate incidents accused him of grabbing them by their neck or throat.

Police review agencies cleared the officer in both cases — the latter of which also occurred on Chicago public school property, according to records obtained by the Tribune.

Under the Police Department’s accountability system, only three of the nearly 30 allegations against him were sustained. Two of the more serious sustained complaints — both while Lancaster was off duty and accused of discharging a weapon — resulted in unpaid 30-day suspensions, according to personnel documents.

In one of those suspensions, prosecutors also charged Lancaster in 2009 with two felony counts of reckless discharge of a firearm. He was accused of shooting his gun into the air while intoxicated and working an off-duty security job at a South Side bowling alley.

That incident was also partially captured on surveillance video. Documents obtained by the Tribune state Lancaster was observed having “an apparent intense discussion” with a bowling alley employee that involved “occasionally grabbing and pushing.”

“At one point Officer Lancaster kicks over a bar stool and walks through the exit door,” according to a report written by an investigator from the Civilian Office of Police Accountability. “The door is left open as Officer Lancaster is observed pulling his weapon and extending his arm upward. They then walk back to the bar.”

A Cook County judge acquitted Lancaster of all charges in May 2010 after another officer said he saw someone fitting a different description fire the shots into the air, according to court records.

Until the incident at Gresham School, he had not faced a public complaint in several years. JaQuwaun’s grandmother Lynida Williams-Saddler, who is his legal guardian, has filed complaints against the officer with the Police Department and with the COPA, the independent agency that investigates misconduct allegations.

She also is suing Lancaster and the city of Chicago, accusing the latter of instilling a sense of impunity among police ranks by failing to investigate and punish misconduct.

In documents filed earlier this year in the lawsuit, the city acknowledged Lancaster is under criminal investigation in connection with the incident and requested that the legal proceedings be postponed until law enforcement officials finish their work.

A spokesperson for Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx confirmed the matter is “under review” but declined further comment.

Spokespeople for the Police Department and the COPA declined to comment for this story, citing an ongoing investigation. Chicago Public Schools officials and Gresham employees did not answer Tribune questions about the incident.

Lancaster remains on active duty and is assigned to protect transit stations in the city.

JaQuwaun, meanwhile, continues to process what happened to him that day in the schoolyard.

He told the Tribune he repeatedly asked to call his grandmother — whom he calls “Mom” and who has raised him since he was young — as soon as he got inside the building, but school officials denied his requests.

“I was shocked, embarrassed, and quiet,” he said, remembering the hours immediately after the incident. “First, I was shocked that he (hit) me; then I’m embarrassed because I got (hit) in front of my friends. And then I was just quiet because I didn’t want to talk to anybody.”

He said the school principal came to see him during his first class to apologize and assure him she was looking into the situation. The teen said he sat in the hallway during his math class that day because he was too emotional to enter Cruz’s classroom.

JaQuwaun said he always considered her an ally, a teacher whom he could go to when he was upset and Cruz would calm him down. He could no longer turn to her, however, when classmates began teasing him because her companion hit him on the playground.

“Other kids were just like, ‘If it was me, I would have punched him,’” JaQuwaun recalled. “And I was like, ‘That’s you.’”

Williams-Saddler said school officials didn’t notify her about the incident until the end of the day. They met in person the following morning, when Williams-Saddler said the staff told her what happened, expressed concern about JaQuwaun’s well-being and informed her Lancaster was a police officer. The grandmother said she also was encouraged to file a police report.

Williams-Saddler said she went to two police stations in an effort to make a complaint, but she said her requests were denied and she was instructed to deal with the Civilian Office of Police Accountability instead. Worried that she was being given the runaround, she hired Marsh to help navigate the system.

A few months later, she was able to see video of the incident for the first time.

“I was so shocked,” she said. “I couldn’t believe that he (the officer) did that. I could see if JaQuwaun was trying to fight or acting crazy, you try to calm him down, restrain him or something. But he wasn’t really doing anything. That’s what shocked me. He was just walking. And you’re just going to put your hands on somebody else’s child?”

JaQuwaun said he did not learn Lancaster was a police officer until after the encounter. The student said he tried to put the incident out of his mind for his last few weeks of eighth grade, but his classmates’ teasing weighed too heavily on him. He said he received permission to stay home his final week of eighth grade, but attended his June 5 graduation.

To him, it didn’t matter that both his grandmother and, according to JaQuwaun, the school’s security guard told him how proud they were that he maintained his composure.

“It’s hard because everybody knows what happened to you,” the teen said. “Real hard because you think everybody is going to use it as a joke all the time.”

JaQuwaun is now a freshman at Simeon Career Academy, where he hopes to try out for the school’s basketball team after growing an inch over the summer. Williams-Saddler said JaQuwaun has struggled with sleep since the physical altercation and is in therapy to help him cope.

He turned 15 last week and received a highly prized cellphone from his grandparents. The teen also asked to go to a haunted house to celebrate his late-October birthday. He dreams of playing college basketball but also is considering enlisting in the Army or, if he has enough money, opening his own shoe business after high school.

JaQuwaun told the Tribune earlier this month that he had not seen the video of the incident but was shown still photographs during a recent interview with COPA and state’s attorney investigators. The pictures gave him “flashbacks,” he said.

He said he wants Lancaster to face criminal charges. He also hopes something good comes from speaking out about what happened to him.

“I just don’t want it to happen to someone else,” JaQuwaun said.

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© 2023 Chicago Tribune

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The government plan to pay billions of dollars to victims of toxic water at Camp Lejeune has unleashed a wave of fraudulent claims that threatens to disrupt or taint what could be one of the largest-ever mass tort cases.

Mikal Watts, whose Texas firm has 6,000 Camp Lejeune clients, said its internal auditors determined hundreds of referrals from other lawyers for Camp Lejuene and other cases were bogus, often based on doctored medical records and fictional reports of diseases or other sickness. Some of the would-be plaintiffs, he said, had been recruited through call centers based in India.

Another lawyer, Donald Marcari, said his Virginia-based firm has rejected scores of suspicious Camp Lejeune claims, including a few from people who listed home addresses that turned out to be a Burger King or a local chapel, or who offered confusing or illogical replies to routine questions about their time at the base or how they got sick.

“As soon as you go outside the script, they can’t answer,” said Marcari, a former Navy attorney.

Grifters trying to cash in on a sprawling public injury case isn’t new, but the Camp Lejeune litigation has qualities that make it particularly vulnerable.

The government has already acknowledged its responsibility—and willingness to pay—for contamination at the North Carolina Marine base that over decades may have exposed as many as 1 million people to toxic water.

A surge in available litigation funding means extra resources for law firms to find and register as many potential plaintiffs as they can before the window to file claims ends next August.

And social media and technology have made it easier than ever for legal advertising and lead-generating firms to find those people and sell their names to lawyers. One telecom executive, David Frankel, said his robocall surveillance company had identified more than 10,000 robocalls seeking Camp Lejeune claimants since Congress approved the payout program in August 2022.

“It pains me to see what the industry has become,” said Bob Goldwater, who was among the first mass tort lawyers to use national advertising to find clients. “Unfortunately, fraud is becoming increasingly more prevalent. It stems from lawyers taking shortcuts and using newer marketing companies without properly vetting them or doing any due diligence.”

Veterans advocates and lawyers also say the fake claims—and the time and effort to identify and weed them out—could dilute the empathy for legitimately ill victims and slow the process of compensating them.

“You’ve got people who are ripping off the government and the attorneys,” said Mike Partain, 55, who was born on the base and developed breast cancer as an adult. “And in the end it’s going to victimize the entire community, because people will look at us and wonder if we are real.”

All claims must first be vetted by the Navy, which oversees the base. A Navy spokesman said it had received about 117,000 claims by mid-October and “is working diligently to identify potential fraud during the claims review process.” He declined to elaborate.

(A government filing Friday disclosed for the first time that paying all the claims filed to date would cost nearly $3.3 trillion.)

But the government has projected it could receive hundreds of thousands of compensation claims—from anyone who spent at least 30 days on the base between 1953 and 1987—and that the payout could ultimately top $21 billion.

Some claimants will qualify for a settlement under an early resolution program announced last month. Thousands more are likely to end up in litigation in the Eastern District of North Carolina.

While court-approved settlements and judgments might take years to be distributed, lead-generators typically get paid up front for delivering potential clients, sometimes thousands of dollars for each name.

Demand for their services has grown in part because of a surge in litigation funding available to law firms. One consultant told Bloomberg Law that lenders by mid-year had committed nearly $2 billion to firms filing Camp Lejeune lawsuits. Industry veterans understand “an influx of capital invites greed,” said Brian Roth, CEO of Rocade Capital, a litigation funding firm. The key to preventing fraud in the industry, he said, is understanding the roles and backgrounds of all the parties.

“Where you have issues is when you have leads being marketed to multiple different buyers, you have call centers without oversight,” Roth said.

One person who said they were randomly phoned and coached by a call-center employee on how to file a bogus Camp Lejeune claim said the coach provided a backstory to make them seem credible.

In recorded calls shared with Bloomberg Law, the coach explained to the would-be claimant the dates and cancer types they should cite, suggested excuses for being unable to provide medical records, and directed the person to say their father worked as a plumber at the North Carolina base and had a DD Form 214, a government document that proves military service.

At one point, the coach chided the would-be claimant for “goofing up” their responses after they had practiced them multiple times, the recording shows.

Tracking down the actual operators of the call centers can be difficult, and proving their practices violate some law even tougher, said Brandon Lewis, a forensic accountant who previously investigated call center fraud with the Arizona Attorney General’s office.

“Even though it’s predicated on fraud, they say, ‘Hey we delivered you these leads,’ ” said Lewis. “The criminal prosecutors will start looking at this and say, ‘Well, this is just real messy and it’s not clear-cut.’”

The person who provided the recordings to Bloomberg Law asked not to be named out of privacy concerns.

They said the call came from an operation run by Revolts PI LLC, which was formed in March and listed its address as an office in Sheridan, Wyo., that is commonly used to register businesses, according to state records.

(Home to what appears to be a single-story brick building, it has been cited as the registered address of approximately 88,000 other businesses, the Sheridan newspaper reported in 2021.)

The address was also listed on the company’s website, which promised “top quality Camp Lejeune leads” as well as leads for other prominent personal injury cases, including lawsuits involving talc powder and the weed-killer Roundup.

Revolts employees or officials could not be reached for comment. No one answered calls to the phone number on the company’s website or messages sent to email addresses on the LinkedIn resumes of two people claiming to be Revolts executives. Earlier this month, Revolts filed dissolution papers in Florida, records there show.

Lead-generating firms have long existed, but they’ve flourished amid the explosion of legal advertising and litigation funding. More than $145 million had been spent last year on legal advertising related to the Camp Lejeune litigation.

Good lead-generating companies do exist, but are hard to come by, said Alabama attorney Fob James IV.

“Most of them suck,” James said. “And their leads are like fool’s gold.”

The practice also has entangled unsuspecting victims like Eileen Adamo, a western Pennsylvania widow whose husband, a Marine, died of kidney cancer in 2020.

Adamo said she received a call from a lead-generating company in March and she shared some information about her husband, Santo Adamo, who once was stationed at Camp Lejeune.

In October, a New York lawyer called and introduced himself as her attorney, Adamo said, and instructed her to file a claim on behalf of her deceased husband. When she told the attorney that she never signed up with a law firm, he insisted she had and emailed her paperwork that appeared to show her electronic signature, she said.

A lot of the information about her husband was incorrect, according to Adamo, who first posted her concerns about the call in a Facebook group for Camp Lejeune veterans and their relatives.

“I said these documents are fraudulent. You need to destroy them,” Adamo said.

She said the attorney agreed.

Watts is prominent among mass tort lawyers, and also has high-profile experience with false claims.

In 2015, he was among seven people charged with fabricating thousands of clients in a bid to collect payouts from the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Watts and four co-defendants were acquitted.

He said that experience has made him hyper-vigilant on the issue, and this month he hosted a session on the topic at a lawyers’ conference in Las Vegas. (The twice-yearly event, called Mass Torts Made Perfect, draws personal injury lawyers from around the country; October’s gathering also included appearances by Sting and Paris Hilton.)

In his session, titled “Client Acquisition: What You Need To Know About Protecting Your Law Firm,” Watts outlined the money trail that starts with litigation funders, then travels from law firms to legal advertising companies to lead-generating companies and brokers and finally to call centers. He said his firm, Watts Guerra, spent months auditing all of the plaintiff leads referred by other lawyers, and determined “hundreds and hundreds” were bogus.

A Marine on his staff found names on the list of Camp Lejeune leads with identical and disqualifying problems: the parents of the claimants were dead, they did not live on the Marine base but visited during the summer, or they were too young at the time of exposure to remember anything except they drank the water.

Watts also said his firm’s audit identified 105 call centers in India and other Asian countries tied to fake leads in mass tort cases including Camp Lejeune. Overseas call centers typically take advantage of cheaper labor and less regulation.

Watts said he shared his information with the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI, but, in an interview, declined to elaborate. A representative of the FBI would not confirm or deny the existence of any investigation.

Watts, who has previously estimated his firm represents more than 200,000 mass tort clients, said that it continues to accept plaintiff referrals from other lawyers, but gives them deeper scrutiny. “We have held back all claims in all torts pending independent third party review,” he said in an interview.

Marcari, the Virginia lawyer, said fake claims would slow down the filings and eventually the payout to victims, with the government already struggling to handle thousands of claims.

Vetting a Lejeune claim is time-consuming, as attorneys have to check information from decades ago, he said.

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© 2023 Bloomberg L.P

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

They worked for $1 a day, and most were glad to get it.

A new exhibit at the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma tells the story of the Civilian Conservation Corps — a New Deal-era program that lifted young men out of Great Depression poverty and put them to work building infrastructure in state and national parks and working in soil conservation, water reclamation and forestry.

“Natural Remedy — The Civilian Conservation Corps in Washington & Oregon” takes up most of the space in the museum’s temporary exhibit gallery and runs through Jan. 7. Compared to other WSHM shows, it’s heavier on text and imagery and lighter on artifacts. Most of the CCC’s legacy isn’t so much tools as it is in the trails, buildings and infrastructure it built in parks and on wild lands.

Founding the CCC

President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the CCC in 1933 as a way to provide both employment for men as well as bolster the nation’s parks and agricultural resources. It would last nine years.

Recruited from across the country, the CCC eventually employed 11,400 men just in Washington. If you’ve visited a national park you might have walked on a trail, peered from a roadside lookout or used a quaint stone-constructed restroom built by the Corps’s young workers.

Eventually, 57 camps were built in Washington with each housing about 200 men. Only men between 18 and 25 could join.

Segregation and exclusion

The CCC — or the C’s as it was sometimes called — was open only to single men. While Blacks were allowed to join, they were housed in camps separate from whites except in Washington and Oregon.

Head WSHM curator Gwen Whiting attributes that to the region’s remoteness from major Black population areas.

“Washington didn’t have a large Black community at the time, compared to other states, but had Black civic leaders and community founders since the beginning of its history,” Whiting said.

Still, Black CCC members were recalled back to their home states in 1934 because of national policies, she said.

“Sadly, our integrated camps didn’t last very long,” Whiting said.

The inherent defects of the CCC’s exclusion of women, its racial segregation and its immigrants-need-not-apply policies were obvious to critics even in 1933, including Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor.

It was Eleanor who pushed for what became known as SheSheShe camps. The camps for women were established by President Roosevelt as a counterpart to the CCC. They eventually helped 8,500 unemployed women.

A photo in the exhibit shows an all Black camp at Mount Rainier National Park, named after CCC director Robert Fechner. An all Black crew built the Longmire lodge in the park.

Another photo shows a Black team at Rainbow Falls State Park in Lewis County in 1934.

Camp life

With a summer-camp-meets-the-Army feel, CCC camps featured barracks and communal dining. The camps provided room and board for the men, something not all had in the outside world. On average, a CCC member gained 12 pounds in his first two months in the Corps, according to the exhibit.

During their leisure time, men could pursue sports, music, games and weekend trips to the nearest towns for dances and other social activities.

Around 1,300 camps were built nation-wide in the program’s first year. They were overseen by U.S. Army officers.

The men were recruited through their local welfare agencies and they signed on for six-month commitments. Of their $30 monthly salary, they were required to send $25 back to the families.

Working wild

Many of the Corps members were from the city and had never been to wilderness areas. Others were raised in rural areas and had poor educations. Some couldn’t read or write.

“When they got letters, they’d save them ’til I got there,” remembered Carroll Aust, who served with Company 297 in Vancouver, Washington, and is quoted in the exhibit. “Then I’d be sitting in the recreation hall reading the letters to them that their parents had had somebody else write for them.”

About 75 percent of CCC members worked in the forestry division. All told, they planted an estimated 3 billion trees across the nation, according to the exhibit.

Others built fences, roads, bridges, irrigation canals and fire watchtowers — 240 in Washington. They cleared brush and strung thousands of miles of telephone lines — the 1930s equivalent of bringing high speed internet to 2023 rural America.

Along with projects at Olympic and Rainier national parks, CCC crews built infrastructure at Saltwater in Des Moines, Twanoh in Union, Millersylvania in Thurston County and other Washington state parks.

Indian Division

Washington’s tribes were also hard hit by the Depression. Some reservations had more than 50 percent unemployment. Roosevelt created the Indian Emergency Conservation Work Division, better known as the CCC Indian Division. It employed 1,500 Native Americans in Washington during its first year.

The Indian Division differed from the main CCC ranks by allowing Native Corps members to work on projects on their own reservations in contrast to getting shipped to another state. Indian members could return home at night, rather than bunk in camps.

Married Indian men and men over 25 also were allowed to join the Corps. By the time the CCC ended, 25 percent of all Native men in the United States had been a member, according to the exhibit.

Legacy

Today, high up in Olympic National Park, a CCC-built trail is carved into a rocky mountain face near Ludden Peak. But halfway across the traverse it ends abruptly. The trail would have taken hikers into the Bailey Range. Today, mountaineers are left to find their own way to the fabled sub range of the Olympics.

Trail lore says the construction ended when the CCC shut down in 1942. While it’s no Mount Rushmore, the trail to nowhere marks a historical point in time. The muscle used to build trails was soon being used to dig trenches in World War II.

While the CCC is gone, there are modern versions of the program like the Oregon-based Northwest Youth Corps, the National Park Service’s Youth Conservation Corps and the California Conservation Corps.

If you go

What: “Natural Remedy — The Civilian Conservation Corps in Washington & Oregon”

When: Now through Jan. 7, 2024 (10 a.m.-5 p.m., Tuesday-Sunday)

Where: Washington State History Museum, 1911 Pacific Ave., Tacoma

Admission: $18 adult, $11 senior, student and military; free for 5 and younger.

Information: washingtonhistory.org/exhibit/natural-remedy/

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(c) 2023 The News Tribune

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

An annual Pentagon report on suicide in the military released last week revealed that the United States Marine Corps has the highest rate of active-duty suicides in the military branches.

The annual report measures suicide rates per 100,000 service members in order to account for the different sizes of the various military branches, according to Military.com. The report indicated that the total number of military suicides was 492, which represented a decrease from the previous year’s report. However, active-duty deaths saw a slight increase, with 331 suicides in 2022.

According to the Department of Defense report, the “2022 Annual Report on Suicide in the Military” showed that the Marine Corps had its highest rate of active-duty suicide since 2011, with 61 total deaths, representing 34.9 deaths per 100,000 Marines. Military.com reported that the Marine Corps has experienced an overall increase in suicide over the past decade, except for dips in 2019 and 2021.

Roughly 97% of individuals in the Marine Corps who committed suicide in 2022 were men, over 50% were between 20 and 24 years old, 90% were enlisted, and 82% were white.

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In contrast with the Marine Corps, the Pentagon’s report showed that Army, Navy, and Air Force suicide rates were each below 30 per 100,000 service members.

Military.com noted that the trend of increasing suicide rates, particularly in the Marine Corps, is a troubling reminder to the families of U.S. service members who have previously committed suicide.

Tanya Mort, a Gold star mother of a Marine who committed suicide in 2021, described the Marine Corps as “toxic” when she was informed of the increase in the Marine Corps suicide rate.

“It’s a pain that never goes away,” she told Military.com. “There’s regret, there’s guilt, there’s just unspeakable emotions every day … and you just sit and you just wonder how you could have saved him.”

Marine Corps Commandant, Gen. Eric Smith, recently highlighted a lack of mental health professionals available to U.S. service members, claiming that the Marine Corps could look at anything from “professional help within our units to command climate” as areas of potential improvement in the service to address the growing issue of suicide.

“What we can do is ensure that Marines know that it is OK to ask for help, it does not injure your career,” Smith said.

Alongside Smith, Marine Corps Sergeant Major Carlos Ruiz released a video in September that addressed the pressing issue of suicide in the Marine Corps.

“We must create a culture where people can make mistakes, and yet they can get back up and not allow them, allow ourselves to beat ourselves down because of that mistake — that there is hope that they can get back up and try it again,” Ruiz said.

A Canadian trucker with Edison Motors recently destroyed the electric vehicle narrative in a two-minute video on social media.

While Edison Motors’ website explains that the company is committed to developing electric and hybrid trucks, as well as electrical vehicle conversion kits that produce fuel savings “without comprise,” the trucker explained that he does not foresee himself driving a fully electric vehicle.

First posted on the “freightfamous” TikTok account, the video shows the Canadian trucker’s response to a cameraman asking why he does not ever see himself transitioning to a fully electric vehicle.

“I mean, maybe if battery technology gets better, grid infrastructure gets better, but … a logging truck uses about two-and-a-half megawatts of power per day with extra capacity in the battery, means you need a three-megawatt battery pack,” the trucker said. “The biggest one is a Tesla semi, which is a one megawatt, so you need three megawatts to run an electric truck. That would mean you need to pack 50,000 pounds — 40,000 to 50,000 pounds of batteries, just to do a full day.”

The trucker explained that even if manufacturers were able to get the 40,000 or 50,000-pound batteries down to a “reasonable” weight, the current grid infrastructure would not be capable of supporting fully electric trucks on a nationwide scale in Canada.

“We haven’t invested in our electric grids since the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s … Logging trucks in British Columbia, that’s a niche industry,” he said. “There’s 5,000 logging trucks that haul logs at two-and-a-half megawatts of consumption per day. That’s 12.5 gigawatts of power.”

The trucker explained that the Site C Dam has been in the process of construction for the past 15 years. According to the trucker, the cost of the project for 1.1 gigawatts of power has been $20 billion. He compared the 1.1 gigawatt capacity to the 12.5 gigawatts that logging trucks alone are currently using.

READ MORE: Video: Joe Rogan shoots Elon Musk’s cybertruck with an arrow

“You would have to flood an area of land the size of Wales to produce that hydropower,” he said.

“We need a lot to make a fully electric vehicle feasible on the North American grid with batteries and all that, he added. “But if you can make it more efficient, and you can make it a hybrid and you can reduce your fuel consumption by 50% and you can burn that as a generator, it’s one R.P.M. [revolutions per minute], running hot, burning cleaner.”

The Canadian trucker concluded his argument by proposing that a 50-60% reduction in vehicle emissions is a significant improvement compared to investing countless billions of dollars into fully electric technology that he claimed is “not really going to work for 90%” of consumers and will result in people continuing to use fully diesel and gas-powered vehicles.

The Republican-controlled U.S. House voted 222-186 on Wednesday evening to table a resolution to censure Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan in relation to her criticism of Israel, a U.S. ally.

At least 23 House Republicans joined all Democrats in voting in favor of tabling the measure, including Michigan Reps. Tim Walberg of Tipton, Bill Huizenga of Holland and John Moolenaar of Caledonia. The vote sets aside the measure, effectively killing it for now.

Walberg, Michigan’s most senior Republican in Congress, said Wednesday that while he “strongly” disagrees with her criticism of Israel in its war with Hamas, he defends Tlaib’s First Amendment right to free speech.

Walberg said he’d spoken directly with Tlaib, listened back to her recent remarks at pro-Palestinian rallies and is “resolute” in his opposition to the resolution to censure her brought by Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“While I disagree with her statements at the rallies, she has a right to make those statements,” Walberg told The Detroit News. “And so on the issue of the First Amendment, I cannot support a censorship of Rashida. That’s where I’ve been, and I’ll continue to be.”

As a “privileged” measure, the censure resolution came up under a fast-tracked process that skips committee and must be considered on the floor within two legislative days. It would not have affected Tlaib’s committee assignments.

“Rashida and I are friends, I care for her. I worry about her grandmother in the West Bank,” said Walberg, dean of Michigan’s House delegation. “I know that she’s a Palestinian American. I know that she’s had the framework all her life that Israel is taking up the land that they rightfully should have. I get that. … But this is a First Amendment issue.”

Walberg made a comparison to former President Donald Trump and the Republicans, including Walberg, who reject the idea that Trump by his words brought about the “so-called insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2021.

“How can I say to Rashida — who stands up and speaks strongly at a rally calling for a cease-fire and attacking Israel and all of that — how can I take any other position than, ‘Rashida, I don’t agree with you, but I’ll defend your First Amendment rights’?” Walberg said.

The eight-term congressman added that he urged Tlaib to “tone things down” and that he wished she’d retract her statements accusing Israel of bombing a hospital in Gaza in conflict with U.S. intelligence assessments.

Huizenga also said he “wholeheartedly” rejects what Tlaib said regarding the terror attack on Israel. “However, we cannot pick and choose when the constitutional protections of the First Amendment apply,” he said. “Rep. Tlaib is wrong and what she said is vile, but the First Amendment permits her to be.”

Greene argued Wednesday that the matter regarding Tlaib “extends far beyond” freedom of speech.

“Our censure ability in Congress is our freedom of speech to say Rashida Tlaib’s words and actions are not something that we approve of,” Greene said in a video posted to X, formerly Twitter. “This is something every Republican member of congress and Democrats should be voting for.”

House Democratic leaders were urging their members to vote against the Tlaib censure, calling the measure “extreme, disingenuous and clearly partisan policy,” noting that it claims that Tlaib “led an insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol complex and that she “followed Hezbollah’s orders.”

“This disingenuous attempt to censure @RepRashida is a blatant attack on freedom of speech & expression,” Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Ann Arbor, tweeted. “As the only Palestinian American & one of few Muslim members of Congress, her voice matters. I call on my House colleagues to reject this shameful & political resolution.”

The daughter of Palestinian immigrants, Tlaib is one of two Muslim women in Congress. Greene’s resolution accuses Tlaib of “antisemitic activity” and “sympathizing with terrorist organizations.”

The claim that Tlaib led an “insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol Complex on Oct. 18 is a reference to a protest inside and outside the Cannon House Office Building by members of the advocacy group Jewish Voices for Peace.

Tlaib was not present for the demonstration, but spoke to a rally nearby calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, according to her office. Walberg said he confirmed this when he spoke with Tlaib last week.

“I needed to find out whether she had entered a federal building — i.e. Cannon House Office Building — with that demonstration, which is illegal. It violates the law,” Walberg said. “If she had done that, if she’d gone in that building, I would have had to vote to censure. But she didn’t.”

Tlaib responded to Greene’s measure last week with a statement calling the resolution “unhinged” and “deeply Islamophobic,” saying it “attacks peaceful Jewish anti-war advocates.”

“I am proud to stand in solidarity with Jewish peace advocates calling for a ceasefire and an end to the violence. I will not be bullied, I will not be dehumanized, and I will not be silenced,” Tlaib said in the statement.

“I will continue to call for ceasefire, for the immediate delivery of humanitarian aid, for the release of hostages and those arbitrarily detained, and for every American to be brought home. I will continue to work for a just and lasting peace that upholds the human rights and dignity of all people, and ensures that no person, no child has to suffer or live in fear of violence.”

Tlaib is an outspoken critic of Israel who opposes U.S. military aid for the country. She faced blowback from both sides of the aisle for her response to the Israel-Hamas War, in part for not sufficiently condemning Hamas in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attack. She and several colleagues introduced a House resolution calling for a ceasefire.

Tlaib has also spoken out against the White House, saying the Biden administration has permitted Israel to retaliate against Hamas in a way that’s endangered the lives of millions of Palestinian civilians living in Gaza.

“President Biden, not all of America is with you on this one and you need to wake up and understand that,” Tlaib said at a pro-Palestinian rally. “I’m not going to forget this.”

Tlaib voted no last week on a resolution in support of Israel, saying that she condemns the killing and targeting of civilians and that it’s “a war crime, no matter who does it.”

“Do not confuse my vote against this one-sided resolution with a lack of empathy for all those who are grieving. I voted against this resolution because it is a deeply incomplete and biased account of what is happening in Israel and Palestine, and what has been happening for decades,” Tlaib said in a statement.

“This resolution rightly mourns the thousands of Israeli civilians killed and wounded in the horrific attacks but explicitly does not mourn the thousands of Palestinian civilians, including over 2,000 children, killed and wounded in the collective punishment of Palestine.”

Had the Tlaib measure moved forward, House Democrats were expected to force a vote on a reciprocal resolution by Vermont Rep. Becca Balint to censure Greene for a history of “racism, antisemitism, LGBTQ hate speech, Islamophobia, anti-Asian hate, xenophobia, and other forms of hatred.”

Balint’s measure cites examples of comments by Greene including referring to Asian Americans as ‘‘yellow people,’’ saying Black people are “slaves to the Democratic Party,” and claiming mass school shootings were false flags or staged.

Greene compared the House’s mask mandate to sending Jews to the gas chamber and said wildfires were caused by Jewish space lasers. The measure also notes that Greene has “downplayed” the actions of Jan. 6, 2021 rioters at the U.S. Capitol and said that had she organized the Jan. 6 attack ‘‘we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.”

Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Birmingham, said Greene’s resolution was “more divisive tomfoolery” after House Republicans wasted nearly a month trying to elect a speaker.“My stance is clear, I support Israel in their fight against Hamas. The motion to censure my colleague from Michigan — with whom I dramatically differ regarding Israel — contains falsehoods and was drafted by an unserious legislator with a history of Islamophobia and antisemitism,” Stevens said in a statement referencing Tlaib.“This is another distraction when Congress needs to be working to pass our federal budget and provide funding for our allies and partners fighting against terrorism and autocracy,” Stevens added.

The U.S. House last censured a member in July — U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, who led the first impeachment prosecution of former President Donald Trump.

The House on Wednesday also defeated a resolution to expel embattled GOP Rep. George Santos of New York, which needed get two-thirds vote in order to pass.

The vote was 179-213, with 19 lawmakers voting present. U.S. Rep. John James, R-Shelby Township, was among 24 Republicans in favor of expelling Santos, while Tlaib and U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly, voted were among 31 Democrats voting no.

Santos faces a federal indictment accusing him of fraud and conspiracy and has pleaded not guilty.

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© 2023 www.detroitnews.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

One month after her mother died, a Texas woman and her husband began collecting the mom’s government benefits, according to federal authorities.

Then they continued to steal those benefits for about eight years, prosecutors said.

From about January 2011 to December 2018, authorities said the San Antonio couple received $218,730.60 in benefits not meant for them.

Now, the 59-year-old woman and 70-year-old man have been sentenced to five years of probation on charges of theft of government funds, according to an Oct. 31 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas. They’ve also been ordered to pay $218,730.60 in restitution.

The defense attorneys representing the man and woman did not immediately respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News.

Authorities said the woman’s mom died Dec. 4, 2010, in Floresville, Texas, about 30 miles southeast of San Antonio. The woman knew her mother died — and the daughter was listed on the death certificate as an informant — but she failed to inform the Social Security Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to court records.

The mom had started receiving Social Security benefits in 1980, records show. That same year, after her husband died, she also began receiving Dependency and Indemnity Compensation benefits as the survivor of a military service member who either died in the line of duty or from a “service-related injury or disease.”

The Social Security benefits and the VA’s Dependency and Indemnity Compensation benefits should have stopped when the woman died, authorities said.

But the payments continued, and her daughter withdrew the money and used it for her personal expenses, according to court records. Authorities said she also wrote checks to her husband.

The scheme ended when the Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General found the mother’s death certificate, according to the release. The Social Security Administration then informed the VA.

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© 2023 The Charlotte Observer

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

According to a handwritten note in a Bible, Corporal Ray Kirby Lilly, known to his family as Kirby, was in a North Korean prisoner of war camp when he passed away on Feb. 28, 1951. A note written in the same page’s margin states that he was listed as missing in action on Nov. 2, 1950, in Korea when he was 17 years and 11 months old.

For more than 70 years, Kirby’s family did not know where his remains were located, but they learned recently that he will be coming home to his final rest in Mercer County.

A resident of the Mary’s Branch community near Matoaka, Kirby was a soldier in the 8th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division, according to Army records. During the Battle of Unsan, his unit was serving as a blocking unit so other units could escape the Chinese forces that were threatening to overwhelm them. His unit was overrun and cut off, but they kept fighting until they ran out of ammunition and had to surrender. Kirby and other members of his regiment were taken to a prisoner of war camp where he later died. His fellow Americans buried him near the camp.

He was the only son in a family with four sisters named Eva, Norma, Carol Louise and Patricia. His parents were Lake and Cordy Foley Lilly.

For years, Kirby’s location was unknown, but that changed recently. His sister Carol Louise Roland looked at the scrapbook of letters and photographs that her family has kept. She was 12 years old when her brother left home to join the Army.

“He’s been gone 72 years,” she said. “He left in 1950, left in May. The war broke out in Korea in June.”

Kirby was first sent to Fort Knox, Ky for basic training. In a letter he wrote to his mother, he said that he was going to Alaska, but later he informed the family that he was being sent to Japan and then to Korea. For years, his letters, his photographs and the memories his loved ones kept were the only reminders of the life he had led.

Phillip Hamm, whose mother was Kirby’s sister Norma, said that he was the oldest grandson. He recalled how the search for his uncle started.

“She was pretty close to Kirby’s age,” Hamm said about his mother. “They were about a year and a half apart, two years apart. I had always been curious about it and I talked to my grandmother several times about it, but she didn’t want to know the answers; so I held off until she died, and after she died I contacted the Army and they came and did a blood draw off of me because they could use my DNA due to the maternal connection through the mother, through the mitochondrial DNA. And then they asked for other relatives and I gave them my Aunt Patty and my Aunt Louise.”

The Army was later given additional familial DNA. This allowed technicians to make the final connection.

“Patty (Patricia) called me a couple of weeks ago and said they had contacted her and they had a 100 percent match, which is unusual,” Hamm recalled. “Evidentially, his remains had been in Hawaii for quite a while. They have a DNA laboratory in Hawaii where they do all this research for repatriated remains and that’s where he’s been for some time. But we don’t know if he was there all along or if he was part of the group that came back when Donald Trump was president.”

Trump visited North Korea in 2018. Gaining access to American remains still in that country was one result of that summit. About 150 sets of remains were brought out of North Korea. Hamm said the Army had told him Kirby had been buried “very near” a prisoner of war camp in that country, and this leads him to believe he was among them.

Last spring, the Army sent letters requesting permission to use a more advanced DNA search. This permission was granted and the results were completed. Kirby had been found.

“We were notified on Monday, Oct. 2,” said Andi Fleming, another member of the family. Knowing that Kirby had been identified was a significant step for the family.

“I’m stunned. A little numb,” Fleming said. “It was such a surreal feeling, and after a little while I realized that it’s such closure for my family, wonderful closure for Louise and my mother (Patricia Smith); but then I realized this was a big deal for the community, for the veterans, for just everyone in general.”

Memories about Kirby and the kind of young man he was came back to many minds.

“I just remember my brother as being carefree,” Carol Louise said. “He loved playing in the creek. He loved hunting. He was just so jovial all the time. He dearly loved his mother. He respected her highly. I remember one day another friend in the neighborhood and him were talking, and he called my brother an SOB. My brother fought him and said, ‘You will not disrespect my mother.’ So that’s how much he did respect my mother.

Carol Louise remembered how Kirby would tease her and her sisters. Getting the news that he had been identified was a step toward giving the family closure.

“Being young, he really aggravated us, but I would give anything to be aggravated again,” she said. “I was just ecstatic. I bawled. I cried. I’d quit a little bit and I bawled and I cried, and I have just told everybody my story, even my church, because it was so great to me and it was so overwhelming; and like Andi said, it was such a shock. We had sort of forgotten about it, but it will be a closure for our family and we will all be here together. And he loved the mountains and we’re so glad he’s getting to come back home. And we thank God because we know a lot of prayers have been answered.”

Letters Kirby had written and mailed home were in a cedar chest with other family mementoes.

“I knew the letters were in there. None of us had ever read the letters,” Fleming said. “To his mother. So I got them out and somewhat organized them and read them since we got the notification.”

“But I knew those were in there and I just started reading them. What we have four months of basic training letters and then we have four letters from overseas and it just really shows what kind of young man he was,” Fleming continued. “He sent money home to his mother, talked a lot about what he was doing. He won a medal for sharpshooting and immediately in the same paragraph he said, ‘I’m going to win two more medals because we’ve got to more guns to do. Then we start working on a machine gun.’ I mean, he was excited. He was excited and exuberant about what he was doing. He had no fear. He didn’t show fear in his letters to his mother. He was very humble, grateful. He talked a lot about the foot he ate. Two different times he wrote down the menu.”

Kirby assured his mother that he was well fed. One letter listed all the food he had eaten over the course of one day.

“Mother, here is what I ate today while I was on K.P. and it didn’t cost a cent (that is all day),” he wrote. “3 quarts milk (ice cold); 6 cups coffee; 3 pieces steak; 4 oranges; 3 pears; 1 banana; 4 pieces a cake; 7 pieces of bread; gravy with beef; chicken; mashed potatoes which I helped make (50 gallons); greens (turnip) and ice cream. That was for a whole day. That is the way they feed you every day. But you get more if you work K.P. (I don’t mind it). I’ve gained 7 pounds.”

Corporal Ray Kirby Lilly will be brought home with full military honors, but the process will take several months, Fleming said. Details such as where he will be laid to rest are still being worked out. A representative of the Army will meet with the family to discuss the procedure for bringing him home.

Months will pass, but after more than seven decades, a young soldier named Kirby will be coming home to his family.

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(c) 2023 the Bluefield Daily Telegraph

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.