Rdtf
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Joined: 13 May 2004
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Location: BUSHville
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 Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 11:51 pm Post subject: War took toll on decorated Marine accused of opening fire |
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WAR TOOK TOLL
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| Quote: | War took toll on decorated Marine accused of opening fire on noisy crowd
By Denise Lavoie, Associated Press Writer | August 15, 2005
LAWRENCE, Mass. --A decorated Marine accused of firing a shotgun at a crowd of club-goers pleaded innocent Monday to attempted murder and other charges and was ordered to be evaluated at a state psychiatric hospital.
Sgt. Daniel Cotnoir, 33, of Lawrence, was named "Marine of the Year" last month for his service in Iraq. A mortician by trade, he prepared the bodies of dead U.S. soldiers for burial. After returning from 10 months in Iraq in November, Cotnoir said the job took a heavy psychological toll.
Early Saturday morning, police said, he pointed a 12-gauge shotgun out the window of his second-floor apartment and fired a single shot at a noisy crowd leaving nearby nightclubs. Lissette Cumba, 15, and Kelvin Castro, 20, were both struck in the leg by fragments. They were treated at local hospitals and released.
Cotnoir, a married father of two daughters, told police he feared for the safety of his family after someone threw an empty juice bottle through his bedroom window.
"It was never this man's intention, as he tells me, to hurt anyone," said his lawyer, Robert Kelley. "It was only his intention to fire a warning shot when he was placed in a threatening situation."
Prosecutor Poppi Hagan told the judge that some of the club-goers had seen Cotnoir standing with his gun in the window of his apartment over his family's funeral home, but thought the weapon was fake.
Cumba's cousin, Stephanie Tejeda, who was in the crowd that night, described seeing the muzzle poking through the open window.
"I just thought he wanted to scare us to get away from the area," said Tejeda, who attended Cotnoir's arraignment Monday in Lawrence District Court. "Who shoots at an open crowd?"
Tejeda said she does not want to see Cotnoir go to prison.
"I just think he should get help. That's how I see it," she said.
But Cumba's uncle, James Rodriquez, was visibly angry after Cotnoir's arraignment.
"She's been crying all night," he said of his niece. "If this man is sick, why was he holding weapons in his house?"
James Stokes, a retired minister who went to school with Cotnoir's father, said he does not believe Daniel Cotnoir was trying to kill anyone.
"This man is a wonderful person," he said. "Something might have happened when he came back from Iraq. ... He's out there picking up body parts," he said.
Cotnoir and his father, Daniel Cotnoir, operate the Racicot Funeral Home in Lawrence, about 30 miles north of Boston.
In Iraq, Cotnoir prepared the battered bodies of his fellow Marines for open-casket funerals. In an interview with The Boston Globe last year, he described retrieving charred and decimated remains.
"What you see out there, it's a real smash to reality," Cotnoir said.
Cotnoir is charged with two counts of armed assault with intent to murder, two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and one count of discharging a firearm within 500 feet of a dwelling.
After Cotnoir met with a court-appointed psychologist, Judge Thomas Brennan ordered him evaluated at the state hospital in Bridgewater.
Psychologist Alexandra Weida said Cotnoir supplied a "reasonable account" of the night of the shooting, but she said, "I question whether he was completely reality-based when he made his decisions."
The judge scheduled another hearing for Sept. 2.
Last month, Marine Corps Times chose Cotnoir over 180,000 other candidates for its annual Marine of the Year award.
Now a Marine reservist, Cotnoir said in an interview last month with the Eagle-Tribune newspaper that he was getting counseling at a veterans hospital in Bedford.
"It's a lot harder to talk about the job now than it was at the time to actually do it," he said. "The stories I've gained from my deployment aren't the kind of stories you share."
Also on Monday, another Iraq war veteran appeared in court in Las Vegas to face charges of using an assault rifle to kill a woman and wound a man in an alley.
An attorney for Matthew Sepi, 20, said he acted in self-defense and should be eligible for psychological treatment. Sepi, an American Indian from Winslow, Ariz., moved to Las Vegas after being honorably discharged as an Army specialist in May. Sepi told police he pulled an assault rifle from beneath his coat and reacted when he was ambushed in an alley. |
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