Ohio vet who killed self at VA missed Army life

April 26, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

DAYTON

The sister of an Iraq War veteran who killed himself outside an Ohio Veterans Affairs medical center says he was depressed because he missed serving in the U.S. Army.

Jesse Huff shot himself with an assault rifle April 16 outside the Dayton center where he had been a patient. His family has said he lived in pain with a back injury from an Iraq bomb blast and had been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. Huff, of Dayton, was honorably discharged in 2007, and had back surgery about a year later.

“He was truly depressed because he wanted nothing more than to be in the military,” said sister Heather Lake.

Journals kept by Huff, 27, showed his upswings and downswings and that he “really felt like he belonged” in the Army, said brother Charles Huff Jr.

Huff was dressed in military fatigues when he shot himself twice near a center memorial about three hours after leaving the center’s emergency room. Montgomery County coroner’s investigators said he had left the ER “against medical advice.”

Huff entered the service in 2003, and wanted to be an infantryman, said his brother, who is a nurse at the Dayton VA.

Huff Jr. said doesn’t believe his brother lost any friends in the war, but that they encountered many roadside bombs.

Huff was prescribed Oxycodone for the pain from his back injury, and “would sometimes check himself into the VA because he thought he was getting [addicted] and needed to detox,” said Scott Labensky, the father of Huff’s half brother.

In October 2008, his mother died at age 45, and Huff took the loss hard.

“They were extremely close,” Lake said. “After the war, he opened up to her. She was more like a friend than a mother. I think he confided in her.”

Huff, who attended engineering and science classes at a community college in fall 2008 and summer 2009, had been accepted to Wright State University for the fall.

He instead went to West Virginia for a 90-day VA treatment program for PTSD.